


Winning Till the Curtain's Coming Down

by shihadchick



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Developing Relationship, M/M, What Happens In Vegas (Doesn't) Stay In Vegas, Woke Up Married, banging with feelings, quietly supportive teammates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-26
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-11-05 23:31:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17928446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shihadchick/pseuds/shihadchick
Summary: Hockey players being hockey players, everyone thinks it's a great idea to hold the rookie dinner in Vegas.And what happens in Vegas doesn't always stay in Vegas.A story about getting married, falling in love, and realizing where you were supposed to be all along, even if everyone thinks you're going backwards to get there.





	Winning Till the Curtain's Coming Down

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lotts (LottieAnna)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LottieAnna/gifts), [blueorangecrush](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueorangecrush/gifts).



> Dedicated with the deepest affection to L and A; who are always right there with me when it comes to these guys. <3
> 
> Many thanks to [sociofemme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sociofemme) and [void_fish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/void_fish) for being thorough betas, defenders of the noble comma, and pushing me to do better. <3  
> * * *
> 
> Set in the 2017-2018 season, in an AU where the Isles kept Josh Ho-Sang up for the whole rest of the season, which a) they should have and b) it looked like they would in December 2017 when I started writing this.
> 
> (Title from Panic’s Vegas Lights because why wouldn’t I, obviously. RIP the Isles undefeated-by-the-Knights streak)

* * *

Hockey players being hockey players, everyone thinks it's a great idea to hold the rookie dinner in Vegas.

From what Tito had heard, some teams used to do that even before the Knights were there; they'd take a few days around their California swing and hit up the Strip, knock the rookie dinner off and then give everyone a day or two to recover from the hangovers.

The rookies’ credit cards probably took a little longer than that to recover, but Tito had been more than a little relieved to find out that that these days, the older guys on the team tended to step in and make sure the bill didn’t wind up too high. Though the less that was said about the rookie skits the better, honestly. 

He'd been the only rookie last year when they'd done it, Pulock and Pelech both still in Bridgeport, and he'd heard enough stories to be nervous, but it'd been fine, pretty much, in the end. At least chirping Leds instead of anyone else had just meant he needed to try and grow a beard and then not say much of anything, and everyone else had thought it was hilarious. 

Tito was also fairly sure that everyone else whose steaks and vintage scotch he'd paid for had bought him dinner once or twice by the end of the season, too.

But this year Josh and Mat were both technically still rookies, and so was Pelly, and Vegas was—

Right there, on the schedule, with a couple days either side, almost like the league was daring them to do it.

And sure, Tito wasn't dumb, he saw how Vegas started the season the same as everyone else did, so it wasn't like any of them were going to fuck themselves up enough to throw away two points that easily, but… it was going to be fun, right?

And it had been fun, at least Tito thought it had been, because the last thing he remembered for sure was laughing at something dumb that Zeeker had said when they'd jammed the entire team onto the stupid monorail thing, and Josh had leaned in and started muttering Simpsons quotes into his ear, pressed tight up against him, and he'd felt so warm, body heat and the alcohol combining to make him blush red, his cheeks hot.

And apparently it had gotten even more fun after that, because Tito didn't remember anything but he sure was waking up in a strange hotel room.

Naked.

With Josh.

Who was—Tito took a fast peek under the covers and then went red all over again—also naked.

Tito swallowed the tiny moan of horror that tried to escape; what had he done? What had _they_ done? What the fuck had happened and also fuck, he needed to stop being so aware of how close to him Josh was. How naked Josh was. How hot Josh was, and Tito was not at all talking about the amount of body heat he was giving off, although that was kind of a thing, too.

It was hard enough not noticing how good he looked in the locker room, Tito absolutely could not creepily perv on him now. Not after they'd crashed in someone's hotel room, or maybe this was someone's idea of a prank, getting them both naked and abandoning them. He wouldn't have picked any of the guys on the team for that level of juvenile prank, though.

What Tito should do was wake Josh up, figure out what had happened to their clothes, and then work out how they could make an exit from wherever they were to get back to their own hotel rooms, preferably without having to pay for this one. Tito squinted, and wished he knew where his glasses were. He hadn't worn contacts—thank god—because he'd made the mistake of passing out with them in after drinking once when he'd still been with the Cataractes, and that had been enough, but it meant he couldn't quite see what was through the door from the bedroom.

Although the fact there was a door to the bedroom in the first place raised some uncomfortable suggestions. Like the way that this room seemed likely to fall into the category of "suite", which also suggested that Tito did not in the slightest want to foot the bill for this.

Josh made a low noise and shifted on the mattress beside him, his eyes still closed, expression smooth and easy, mouth open as he breathed in and out, breath whistling just a little with the near-constant sinus crap they all picked up from spending all day in and around cold, damp rinks.

Tito felt himself smile automatically, fondly, and then caught himself at it and groaned, slumping back into his pillows and covering his face with his hands.

He was so—

He blinked, and opened his eyes again, staring at his hands in confusion, although on some level he kind of knew what he was about to see. What he'd felt press against the bridge of his nose, skin-warmed metal hard and unyielding around the bottom of his finger joint.

He felt the breath freeze in his lungs while he took that in and then grabbed at the sheets again, tugging them down far enough to see the matching ring on Josh's hand.

They were _married_? What the fuck?

They were _so screwed_.

* * *

"Josh," he hissed, panicking too hard to even think of anything else to do, and then he winced at the way that set up sympathetic echoes inside his own head, triggering the hangover he'd been hoping to avoid.

It had probably been a fool's hope, really; if he'd drunk enough to black out anything they'd done after a certain point then the hangover was probably inevitable, but that didn't make it any more pleasant. And it turned out freaking out and feeling like you were going to puke for entirely non-alcohol related reasons didn't mix at all well with a hangover.

Beside him, Josh made a grumbling noise under his breath that in almost any other circumstance Tito would've found cute, and tried to press his face into the pillow more firmly.

"Josh, wake up," Tito repeated, and then gave up on being polite and reached out to touch his shoulder, ready to pull back in a hurry if Josh was one of those guys who came up swinging. Tito didn’t have the faintest idea how Josh would react to someone he wasn't expecting to touching him while he was asleep.

"Ugh, no, go away," Josh mumbled, eyes still closed tight, and Tito wasn't entirely sure he'd woken up enough to do more than reply on reflex.

"No, sorry, you gotta," Tito said, letting the urgency in his voice make him a little louder than usual.

Josh blinked up at him, and Tito thought, stupidly, that he had really nice eyelashes, and then got a grip on himself and refocused on what was actually important.

"Ughh, what," Josh said, his voice hoarse as he blinked hard and then squinted.

Tito felt a little stir of vicious glee at that; Josh was at least as hungover as he was, and misery loved company, that was for sure.

"What do you remember from yesterday?" Tito asked. "Because I have no fucking clue what happened after, like, dinner."

"I—oh," Josh said, and then he sat up, fast, nearly smacking his head into Tito's—and wouldn't that be embarrassing—before pulling a face that suggested he'd just found out the hard way not to move that quickly yet. "How much did we drink?"

Tito figured that was probably a rhetorical question.

"Drinking's not the worst of it," Tito said, and hoped that Josh wasn't going to freak out about the part where they'd kind of woken up. In bed together. While naked. After possibly getting married.

He didn't think anything had happened that might freak Josh out—he got kind of cuddly when he'd been drinking, sure, but he didn't usually hook up when he was that drunk—but having to brace himself for a potential no-homo freakout wasn't a fun addition to the hangover either.

"What, did we get tattoos or something?" Josh was still blinking blearily at him, and if Tito was guessing he'd say he was thirty percent awake. Maybe forty.

"No!" Tito replied quickly. "Nothing that—uh, actually maybe it is."

He'd been going to say nothing that permanent—and he should probably be more relieved than he actually was that they hadn't compounded their problems by also getting awful, ugly, or hard to explain tattoos—or worse, matching tattoos, ticking all of the previous boxes—but marriage might be about the closest thing to that.

"No one got arrested…?" Josh said, like he was pretty sure it was a statement and not a question and only going a little uncertain at the end.

Tito thought about it.

"I don't think so," he said.

"Cool," Josh said. "If no one committed a crime or needs to go to the hospital then please just let me die of this hangover in peace and quiet."

"The thing is," Tito said, and words seemed inadequate all of a sudden, so he let himself trail off and just stuck his hand right in front of Josh's face.

"What—?" Josh started to say, and then, clearly, his eyes focused and he snapped his mouth shut with an audible click as his teeth clenched.

"Yeah," Tito said, and tried not to sound quite as miserable as he felt.

This should be funny, right? Maybe it would be later.

But right then all he could think of were all the problems they were about to run right into, and all the people they'd have to call—their agents and the Isles front office and, fuck, their _parents_ —and how hard it was going to be to fix this.

And okay, maybe more than a little of him was also sad about the fact that he was apparently _married_ to the guy he'd had a raging crush on for the last two years and he couldn't even remember if he'd gotten a chance to—however drunkenly—kiss him when they said their vows.

This was basically the worst. The actual fucking worst. Tito didn't deserve this, he was a mostly good person most of the time. _Fuck_.

"Aw, shit," Josh said, and Tito didn't have it in him to disagree in the slightest.

They just looked at each other for a moment, and Tito felt his heartbeat speed up, caught himself holding his breath. It felt like—something, although, maddeningly, he wasn't sure what.

"Do you think this is some weird prank the rookies thing?" Josh asked eventually, chewing on his bottom lip like it was his mouthguard.

Tito shook his head instantly. "None of the guys are that creative," he said. And then he paused for a moment's thought. "Or, um. I don't think they do the no homo thing either."

He sounded more unsure than he should, saying that.

He'd never heard any of those jokes in the Islanders room, and it'd been _nice_ to have that, after growing up and hearing that all the time, if not worse.

He wasn't entirely sure why; he wasn't naive enough to believe the NHL was that much better about those kinds of things than the CHL, no matter how many You Can Play nights they did. He had kind of wondered, sometimes, about a couple of his teammates—but he'd never asked. It wasn't as if he'd spoken up to say anything either, so it was maybe unfair to hope that someone else would, if he wasn't the only one, but—it'd be nice. Either way, he appreciated the fact he didn't have to tense up over jokes in the showers and shit like that.

"Yeah, true," Josh said, although he wasn't looking at Tito all of a sudden either.

"Oh hey," he added, leaning away for a moment to grab something off the nightstand. "Your glasses, I guess you probably need those, eh?"

He pressed them into Tito's hand, and Tito was torn for a moment between deep relief—he hated how it felt to deal with the world when everything was blurry and too far away—and mild dismay, because now the tiny grin on Josh's face was coming into focus in full 3D and high definition and he looked so good that Tito kind of wanted to cry.

He shouldn't have to deal with incredibly attractive naked guys he was super into when he was hungover, it was just too unfair. There should be something in the CBA about this.

And while he was lost in self-pitying thoughts, Josh was just continuing to look at him, and oh right, Tito should say _something_ else.

"Anyway," Tito added, the more relevant reasoning coming to mind almost too late to matter. "It can't be a rookie prank, because I'm not a rookie anymore. Rookie."

"Oh fuck off," Josh replied automatically and reached over to shove Tito, his thumb digging into his chest, pressing against his ribcage.

"Just saying," Tito replied, and hoped he didn't sound as breathless as he felt. At least Josh didn't seem to be blinking at the fact he was touching bare skin and not underarmour or a t-shirt or whatever, and he didn't seem to be freaking out about being in bed with Tito, just—

Just the whole apparently married thing.

"I don't think we can do anything about it right now anyway," Josh said reasonably, sitting up and letting the sheet slide down to pool in his lap. Tito was absolutely not looking to see if he was hiding morning wood under there, he _wasn't_. "So we should order room service and then figure our shit out."

Tito couldn't actually argue with that one.

* * *

Josh had been right about one thing, Tito thought, leaning over to put his plate back on the tray the hotel had sent up. To their _suite_ , because yeah, apparently someone had sprung for the honeymoon suite at the Bellagio for them, and by the time they got out of there Tito was going to have more than few questions for some of their teammates.

But food had definitely helped him feel more awake, and a little more in control of his life, and definitely more like he was going to be able to figure out how to get through this whole thing. That confidence had taken a bit of a knock when he'd gotten up—sheet draped around his hips, carefully not making eye contact with Josh—and dug around in the pile of his clothes where they were draped over the chest of drawers, and found not just his wallet and his phone (thank fuck) but also their fucking marriage license.

He wasn't an expert, but it looked pretty legit to him. And they definitely didn't have any teammates who were good enough at Photoshop to make something like that up.

"I guess we need to call our agents?" Tito had said, after stepping into his underwear—ugh, day old briefs—and slacks, and staring glumly at the creased mess that had been a nice shirt when he'd gotten it out of his suit bag the day before.

"Huh?" Josh said from three feet away, doing his own dressing routine, although he'd interrupted it by thumbing through messages on his phone rather than putting a shirt on, and Tito once again got a little distracted noticing how good his arms looked, how well defined his abs were.

Tito was so screwed.

"This looks pretty authentic," Tito said, and handed the license over, careful not to brush fingers with Josh.

Josh looked down just long enough to read it and then snorted. "Agents? Beau, I'm pretty sure we gotta call our _parents_ first."

Tito swallowed hard. Fuck, he wasn't wrong. " _Tabarnak_ ," he said with great feeling. "Merde de shit de fuck de—you're right."

"Guess that's why you married me," Josh joked, and Tito tried not to react, but after the first second where he felt his eyes widen and his breath catch, his sense of humor caught up and he started to laugh too.

Like Josh had meant him to, he was pretty sure.

Yeah, one thing was for sure. Drunk Tito might make some bad decisions, but he had pretty good taste.

* * *

Tito paused with his phone in his hand and looked over at Josh, who, all jokes aside, still looked about as confused and fucked up as Tito felt.

"So what are we… telling our parents?" he asked, and Josh sighed, and climbed back onto the bed, shuffling around until he was sitting up with the pillows stuffed behind his back, leaving a space for Tito beside him in what Tito was going to consider a tacit invitation.

Tito tried to ignore just how inviting that whole image was, and firmly reminded his libido to sit down and shut up, it'd gotten him into enough trouble already. 

Getting drunk and getting married as a joke was one thing; actively and soberly hitting on one of your teammates was—a very different thing. However cool the team might theoretically be about not entirely straight dudes.

And then he got on the bed anyway, because, honestly, he was too hungover to just stand awkwardly by the bed when there was a perfectly good mattress right there.

Josh shrugged, his elbow nudging against Tito's.

"We tell them what happened, I guess?"

Tito sighed. "And then what?"

"And then—oh," Josh said softly. "They'll wanna know what we're doing about it."

"Can we undo it?" Tito asked. "I mean, it worked for Britney Spears, right?"

"Probably," Josh said, and then he laughed, and winced at the movement. "I mean, we're not that famous."

"Not yet," Tito teased automatically and grinned at Josh. They had good things ahead of them, he was sure of that much.

Josh grinned back at him and Tito was distracted, again, by how nice his smile was. The full curve of his lips, the flash of teeth behind them, so far somehow undamaged by sticks and pucks. The easy quirk of his lips, the way he was always quick to smile and laugh, warm and encouraging. Tito had been at ease with him almost from the moment they'd met; recognized the skill on the ice and the charisma off it.

And—well, he'd wanted to get close to him just as quickly.

Wanted to taste for himself the way Josh held himself; centered and warm and so vivid, always entirely himself and never slow with a word or a gesture. Sometimes those were reassuring, or even the type of kick in the ass they needed sometimes, not taking anything for granted.

And sometimes it was just because Josh was—well, nice. He actually seemed to give a shit when someone was down, when they were slumping or if something wasn't going right. And he'd been positive and engaging and always happy to help out the PR people even when he'd been the one sitting out of games, healthy scratched and then down in Bridgeport.

Josh snapped his fingers in front of his face, and Tito focused on him again in a hurry, gaze shooting guiltily back to him.

"Earth to Tito?" Josh said. "C'mon man, we, uh. Should figure this out, I guess."

"Maybe we should ask someone what happened first?" Tito suggested, turning his phone over in his hands a few more times, fidgeting.

He didn't have any missed calls or a deluge of texts or messages, nothing that made it seem like anyone else might know what had happened. That was good, that was probably for the best, he told himself, because then that meant they could get out of this without having to explain it, probably, and wasn't that the best result?

He didn't want to think too long about how much he might actually want to have a legal, intimate, unquestionable connection to Josh. That was going too close to the bone.

"Yeah," Josh said slowly, slouching and sliding down his pile of pillows a little, his pants slipping on the soft sheets.

His weight was slowly but surely tipping into Tito's side, and while it wasn't like he was going to push Tito out of the bed or anything—Josh was too gangly for that, still, even with the extra year or so he had on him—it was still closer than they should probably be. Still giving Tito ideas he shouldn't be entertaining.

Tito bit his lip and tried to focus.

"Who were we—there's not, like, witnesses on that thing or anything, are there?" Josh sounded unsure, although as far as Tito was concerned that was a pretty fucking smart idea.

The idea of getting up from the bed again—of moving enough that Josh realized just how much he was touching Tito, how they were too close—that was less fun.

But it had to be done, because they could probably hide out in the suite for a couple hours longer before anyone started looking for them, but they weren't going to be able to stay there forever. And that meant dealing with the real world again, however shitty it might feel.

"Okay, right," Tito said, and got up, pretending he didn't feel cold where Josh was no longer plastered against his side and kind of reading his phone screen over his shoulder.

That was actually pretty normal, the way they sat on buses and on the plane, although Tito was kidding himself if he thought it was exactly the same way he'd lean on Barzy or try to chirp him for his snapchats while he was trying to come up with a less stupid caption and all that kind of dumb shit.

Tito might've done some undeniably dumb shit because of this crush, but the last thing he was going to do was make things weird by letting Josh find out about it. That had to be his number one priority.

He skimmed over the text again, trying to read more words than just his name and Josh's and the words 'lawful wedlock', and this time his eyes focused on the scrawl near the bottom, just above the name of the Reverend. Tito tried not to feel a little relieved that it had, technically, been a church wedding, even if he didn't think his mother was going to agree on that front.

But right there in black and white, was a squiggle he had no trouble translating now he was making the actual effort, because he'd sat beside Quiner at enough signing events now to know his signature backwards and forwards. Hell, he probably could've signed for room service for him and gotten away with it, which he was definitely considering for a future prank since apparently Quiner had been just as drunk and dumb as the two of them.

Although at least he seemed to be keeping his mouth shut about it, given the lack of other people freaking out at Tito right now.

Or, Tito thought glumly. Maybe Quiner had been blackout drunk enough that he didn't remember, either.

He tried not to let himself think about how part of the reason he hated that idea was because it left him with a grand total of, oh, count 'em: _no one_ that he could ask if he'd even gotten to kiss Josh last night.

Tito waved the paper at Josh and—sat right back down on the bed again.

So sue him, this was hard and he felt shitty; he wasn't going to deny himself the tiny scraps he could probably get away with that Josh would never know or begrudge him.

"So… Quiner," Josh said, and tapped his fingers on the side of his knee, a fast impatient rhythm that somehow seemed to be right in time with the pounding of Tito's head.

"I should check if Barzy knows anything too," Tito said, thinking it through out loud.

"I'll take Quiner, then," Josh said, leaning right over Tito to grab his own phone back off the nightstand, all lean warmth plastered right up against him for long enough that Tito accidentally held his breath and then had to try not to gasp obviously when Josh finally moved away again.

He was torn; he'd just mentioned Barzy and he knew him better than Josh did so obviously he should tackle Mat in their Great Wedding Disaster Surprise Investigation, but the idea of not knowing what Quiner was going to say to Josh and not being able to filter that if he needed to… it was making Tito sweat worse than the hangover.

And there was no way to protest and try to do it himself either, not without making a big deal of it, and that'd have just about the same effect as letting Josh talk to him in the first place, so…Tito was going to have to just hope like hell Quiner could answer some of their questions and that Tito himself hadn't said anything he couldn't talk his way out of this morning.

He deliberately didn't let himself focus on how "I do" was probably the biggest and most incriminating thing he could possibly have said all weekend.

* * *

In the interests of hopefully covering their asses at least a little, Tito volunteered to go hide out in the bathroom and call Barzy from there while Josh called Quiner. The door to the bathroom looked more solid than the one to their locker room back at Barclays even, so probably it'd be soundproof enough, Tito figured.

He pushed it open and then stopped dead, eyes widening.

Apparently among the many things last night his blackout-drunk ass had forgotten was the fucking ridiculous fancy marble bathroom with a whirlpool tub. Tito couldn't imagine he would've gone to sleep without at least taking a piss, but it all looked wholly unfamiliar, so maybe he had just passed out as soon as they'd made it upstairs.

Well.

After they'd both stripped naked, anyway.

Tito was tempted to put off checking in with anyone long enough to shower—the idea of standing under boiling hot water until he dissolved and didn't have to care about how he was getting himself out of this situation was extremely appealing—but that was cowardly and he knew it.

He shut the door behind him again and perched on the edge of the tub, staring at his phone.

Another thing he should've thought about earlier fell into his mind then, and he flipped open his pic galleries, checking if he'd added anything last night.

Instagram was reassuringly blank; a filtered all to hell picture of their desserts from the night before with a couple chirps from guys back home in the comments and nothing after that.

When he went through his phone after that, there were a few pictures from a bar that looked familiar; a bunch of his teammates, mostly red-faced and sweaty with drinks in their hands, laughing and talking, all of them jammed into a couple of booths. Nothing much after that, though; no helpfully illustrative pictures from outside the registry office or the chapel or wherever the hell he and Josh had wound up.

Although—he flipped back a few pictures, squinting.

That was definitely Josh's shoulder and his jaw in one of the last pictures, pushing into the frame where Tito had been trying to take a picture of the dumb face Hickey had been making, halfway through a fishing story, and Tito thought, "I remember that," had a flash of the warmth of Josh's shoulder pressed tight against his, the heat of his breath on the side of his face.

Felt it fall into place in his mind with a certain sense of inevitability that some time not all that much later than that, Tito had turned to face him and forgotten to guard the part of his expression that said just how very much he wanted him.

Remembered that Josh had read that very clearly and then—

Well, okay, so it turned out after he'd been awake for a while and drunk a lot of water and then had some time to think about it, Tito remembered kissing Josh.

Remembered Josh kissing back.

And he remembered just exactly how dirty they'd danced right before that, in what had to have been clear view of the entire rest of their team.

Yeah, it seemed like Barzy was gonna know exactly what Tito had been thinking the night before, and that what he'd been thinking with was his dick.

* * *

Steeling himself, Tito jabbed his thumb at the call icon, and then squeezed his eyes closed, leaning his head in his hands as he held the phone right up against his ear. Maybe it was the hangover talking, but the dial tone sounded even more fake and robotic than usual. He tried to unclench his jaw, and didn't get much of anywhere with that.

"Hey Tito!" Barzal said cheerfully, _much_ too loudly, and Tito winced as it somehow echoed off all the marble in the bathroom, tiny annoying Mat Barzals tapping away at his skull with hockey stick-shaped pick-axes.

It was possible he was not just hungover but also being over-dramatic.

Then again, he'd woken up married to the guy he had a raging crush on, so his bar for drama felt pretty fucking high right then and there.

"Barzy," he said cautiously, for all the good that did, as Mat fucking giggled right back at him.

"Yeah, you sound hungover as fuck," Mat said, far too gleefully for Tito's liking.

Tito just groaned, and hoped the echo wasn't too noticeable over the phone.

"Just a little," he admitted. "Aren't you? I'm pretty sure you were keeping up with us last night."

Tito didn't even need to be able to see Mat to picture the broad grin that had to be spreading across his face as he replied, "Nope, I drank a bunch of water and slept like a baby, thanks." There was danger hiding in that sentence if he pushed it, Tito thought, and let it go.

"So anyway," he went on, "Totally hungover as fuck, just wanted to check, uh," and Tito's nerve failed him for a moment there. The only way out was to push on through, but he just couldn't, not like that, and the only thing that stopped him from just hanging up on Barzy was knowing that Josh was going to ask him what happened and "I chickened out" was probably not the line he wanted to go with there.

Mat gave him a whole twenty seconds to twist in the wind before pushing, his voice a little gentler than before. "What's up, man?"

Tito wished, briefly, there was a way he could make himself smaller or quieter or anywhere but there for this conversation, stuck in this echoey bathroom perched on the side of a tub that was big enough not just for him and Josh—don't think about that, he told himself frantically, don't picture that right now and do not get distracted—but possibly half the rest of the team as well.

Tito also wished he'd thought to practice this conversation in his head a little more before actually trying to have it, because now they were at the crux of the matter and he had no idea whatsoever what to even say.

They said God looked out for fools and drunks and children, and Tito kind of felt like all three at same time, but he pushed himself to just start talking, and it all poured out.

"I think I made a mistake," Tito said, in French, taking refuge in the language his words had always come easiest in, and in the knowledge that Mat could understand him, even if he replied in English half the time when they weren't around any other Francophones. The words spilled out of him like they'd been trying to escape all morning, ever since he woke up, tinged with fear and worry and still clinging onto that last scrap of hope that it was all going to work out, somehow. 

He very carefully didn't let himself think about why it it was important to him that this also meant that Josh probably wouldn't understand him, or at least wouldn't catch everything if he could hear any of it. Tito had a very reasonable idea of just how much French most guys from more Anglo parts of Canada retained after high school, and it was mostly the curse words.

And the ones for hooking up, and fuck, Tito had to stop thinking about that.

"Whoa, whoa," Mat said, interrupting him before Tito could get even more overwrought than he had been to start with. "Are you—wait, what exactly are you freaking out about? Please tell me you didn't get arrested."

Tito blinked.

"Why would I have gotten arrested?" he asked indignantly. He's not even underage in the States anymore, unlike certain people he could mention, _Mathew_.

Mat snorted.

"You and Sanger were making a pretty good run at public indecency," he said bluntly. "I didn't even realize you'd gotten past the whole making eyes at each other and flirting badly part, but good for you, eh?"

"I—uh—" Tito said. Since when did Mat notice him flirting with Josh? Fuck, what if Josh realized he had been flirting with him before last night?

Tito got a grip on himself, and then played that last comment back inside his head. He was being stupid, obviously. He wouldn't have wound up somehow getting married to Josh if they hadn't both—if they weren't—

Fuck, he wasn't getting anywhere with this.

Time to change tactics.

"When was the last time you saw us?" he asked, with a sigh. His head felt like it weighed a thousand pounds, and while he was pretty sure he must have been happy the night before, no part of this—not even if he had gotten to do more than just kiss Josh, especially if neither of them could really remember it—none of this was worth it, not the confusion and the fear and the growing conviction that things were massively fucked up and could get worse if they weren't careful.

He just hoped that Mat wouldn't jump on that 'us' like it was any kind of admission. Mercifully, he didn't.

"Well, you had your hands on Sanger's ass and his tongue down your throat," Mat said matter-of-factly. "So I kinda figured when you vanished that you were _getting a room_."

"Ah," Tito said. "We, ah. Yes."

"I mean, at least he can't knock you up," Mat said, and Tito spluttered indignantly, and yet, in some weird way, felt a little more like his world was back on its axis again. If Mat was chirping him so naturally then it couldn't all be bad.

"Why are you assuming—" Tito started to say, before realizing that was going nowhere good and dropping it. "Anyway, what I actually wanted to know was, uh, do you know why we're at the Bellagio?"

Somehow, that seemed like an easier way to put it. Tito felt like he hadn't gone thirty seconds without thinking about that marriage certificate since he'd seen it, the words swimming into focus in his mind's eye any time he let it. If Mat didn't already know, then Tito wasn't sure he wanted anyone else to know, not until they could get it fixed.

People got marriages annulled all the time, or so celebrity gossip shows made it seem. (So Tito had watched a bunch of them; they spent a lot of time in hotels and there were only so many times you could watch the same episode of Diners, Drive-ins and Dives.)

"You've seen Ocean's 11 too many times?" Mat suggested. "It was the closest hotel and you were too horny to wait for something else? I don't know man, I'm just glad you're not passed out in a gutter somewhere. Way to go class it up for a hook-up, eh?"

"I don't know that we, uh, hooked up," Tito said glumly. "He's just acting normal this morning, so probably not, right?"

Mat snorted. "Yeah, sure, sounds normal."

Tito didn’t have the faintest idea what Mat thought he was getting at there, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to ask. The possibilities got more horrifying the longer he waited.

"What? I don't know what you mean—you are a bad friend, Mathew."

"I'm a very good friend," Mat said. "I covered for your ass not actually getting back to the hotel last night, didn't I? And if you can't tell when a boy is flirting with you, well, that seems like a you problem. You should thank me, really. Not that it looked like you needed the help last night, I'm just saying."

"I—" Tito said helplessly, trailing off into confusion.

He couldn't really argue with any of that, and it was blowing his mind more than a little; made him want to sit down and thoroughly reassess every time he'd hung out with Josh to see if he could identify whatever it was that Mat was picking up on. It was fucking embarrassing if Mat had seen any of this coming before him, since it wasn't like he had the best track record for realizing when someone was hitting on him unless they got really blatant about it either. 

Most importantly, though, it sounded like Mat didn't know anything about how Tito's night had ended—at least, anything more than what Tito had been dumb enough to admit up front—and that meant he wasn't going to be able to shed any new light on that, so probably Tito should just wrap the conversation up, suck it up and go talk to Josh like they were both adults.

And at some point they were going to need to get back to the team hotel if nothing else. 

Tito was pretty sure that while there might be some leeway for the night of the rookie dinner, the day before their actual game the coaching staff were going to be a lot more humorless about guys getting in before curfew.

Shit, how was he supposed to play a game tomorrow when it felt like his head was this much of a mess?

Tito had no idea how he was going to focus on anything any time soon, even if he could shake the faint headache.

"Well, thanks I guess?" he said, dropping back to English to try and get a little more distance. "We'll—I'll be back this afternoon, eh? See you then, Barzy."

He hung up over top of Mat crowing something that was probably unnecessarily filthy and let his head fall into his hands, nearly losing his balance on the slippery marble.

God, it was so unfair to have this ridiculous bathroom and not even a hope in hell of taking advantage of it properly. But that, Tito reminded himself, would have been taking advantage of Josh when he was too drunk to know what he was doing either, so it was, overall, a good thing.

And maybe in a week or so he'd be able to fully believe that.

As tempting as it was to just stick his head under the faucet, Tito was pretty sure that would only make him look like even more of a disaster than he already did, so he forced himself to slow down—to be fair, moving too fast also made it feel like his head was going to explode, still—and to fill the extremely fancy looking glass by the sink with water and then drink it, slowly.

Rehydrating some more felt like it had helped, even if it was only psychosomatically, but there was only so much Tito could drag ass at that point and it felt like he was running out of that time.

He turned back to refill his glass, and then filled the other one automatically as well. Josh probably could also do with some water, Tito figured, and carefully didn't press his subconscious for more details on that one.

He was just being a good friend, that was what friends did.

They brought their hungover friends water and Tylenol, and didn't let them touch damp towels that might make them feel nauseous—that had been a weird and entirely scarring experience the last time Tito had gone out with Francis and his friends—and they definitely didn't think about them naked. At least, not for more than a couple of seconds, because Tito was pretty sure even the straightest guys made comparisons sometimes. How could you even make a quality dick joke if you didn't know what material you were working with?

Then again, Tito hadn't been able to kid himself with the idea that he was straight at any point since he'd been in elementary school, so what did he know? Just what he heard from keeping his eyes down and his hands off and his face as close to neutral as he could manage.

With a sigh, he picked up both glasses and nudged the bathroom door open with his hip, walked back to the bed and handed one to Josh before sitting next to him on the edge of the mattress.

There was, as a voice in the back of Tito's mind observed very dryly, a couch in their ridiculous suite, too. They could be sitting over there, but Josh was still perched on the end of the bed, and if Josh was there, well.

Tito was going to find himself nearby.

"Thanks," Josh said, taking the glass and draining it in one long draught.

Tito's eyes caught on his Adam's apple, the way his throat moved as he swallowed, and he hoped that he was keeping the vaguely inappropriate thoughts it was giving him off his face. If only his glasses hid as much as sunglasses could.

Josh didn't seem to notice, at least.

He was preoccupied, quiet in a different way than he'd been when they'd woken up, his usual calm pasted uneasily over an undertone that Tito couldn't quite read. He was turning his phone over in his hand, fidgeting, and as Tito leaned in to bump their shoulders together, Josh sat up straighter and inhaled deeply.

Tito waited.

"So I called Quiner," Josh started, and Tito—was not sure he wanted to hear this, really. Not that Quiner could've done anything but spill to Josh how Tito had doubtless put a move on Josh and dragged them into this situation in the first place. He was a little hazy on that part still, but if it seemed all too painfully plausible for him sober, then drunk Tito was probably even less likely to have made good choices.

"How hungover is he?" Tito interrupted.

Josh cracked a grin at last, and there was definite relish in his tone as he replied "So hungover. So, _so_ hungover. At least as bad as us." Josh paused for a second, reconsidered that. "Maybe worse. I think he had it coming." Josh's smile vanished so fast that Tito almost thought he must have imagined it.

Tito leaned in harder. "Josh?"

Josh sighed and let his head tilt into him, his temple resting against Tito's. They were close enough in height that it didn't take any effort to line up properly, which was kind of nice.

"It's possible," Josh said, more high-pitched than usual. "That this might be my fault."

Tito blinked. He really hadn't seen this conversation going _there_.

"Excuse me?" he asked, overly conscious of the way his voice had hit a tone he hadn’t really intended it to.

"Apparently," Josh started, and then took a deep breath, a little shaky with it, and Tito couldn't stand that, put an arm around him and patted his back encouragingly. It wasn't—he wasn't copping a feel, he told his subconscious fiercely; he wasn't doing anything more than a friend should do, when his friend—husband, _fuck_ —was upset.

"Uh, apparently," Josh went on, jaw tight. "I thought that signing legal documents was an ideal way to escalate when the boys were giving us shit for being attached at the—hip."

Tito was pretty sure that 'hip' had been a last minute substitution in that sentence. He had some horribly good guesses about what word should have been there, and it even rhymed, sort of.

"Right," Tito said, still trying to process the fact that maybe he hadn't been the architect of their misfortune after all. At least, not the sole genius who'd decided it was something to suggest rather than something he'd happily go along with. "Uh, I don't—I don't blame you, I signed too, you know?"

"Quiner's probably the only one who knows we, uh, went through with it though," Josh went on. "I think everyone else thought we were joking, he was the only one who was there. At least, he's pretty sure about that."

Tito wasn't entirely sure he wanted to trust his personal and professional reputation to what a completely plastered Alan Quine could or couldn't remember, but they didn't exactly have a choice at this point.

"Okay, well," Tito said, and was horrified to feel the words 'it is what it is' crowding up his throat, force of habit a little too strong there. He swallowed and started over. "So. What do we do now, do you think?"

Josh blinked at him, "I—Beau, I'm glad you're being cool about this, but this isn't just—bad decisions and alcohol and god, I don't want to know what the fucking blogs are going to say about this." He paused, and then looked like he'd bitten into something rotten. "I really don't want to know what Don Cherry's gonna say if it gets out. _Fuck_. At least you're not Barzy, I guess?"

Tito knew what Josh meant, and he even agreed, for the most part; if this got out then the media was going to be unbearable and that was without the whole part where, oh, their drunken mistake marriage was to another man and Tito really, really didn't want to be the first NHLer to come out, he was just not ready for that at all, no thank you, but he was also kind of a little bit insulted.

"What, I'm not good enough if you could've put a ring on it with the first star of the month?"

Tito was also not entirely sure Barzy had made the three stars that month nor, in a more general sense, was he one hundred percent sure what month it actually was, but it was the spirit of the thing.

Josh sighed, and set his jaw like he was about to argue—Tito tried not to flinch, he really had just been joking, and he'd thought that was obvious—before deflating again.

"I guess you don't remember, uh, we didn't wind up here because we did too many shots. We got drunk and then we made out kind of a lot and then Quiner told me to make an honest man of you before we got arrested for public indecency," he admitted.

That was—Tito thought, sitting with it for a moment. That was a lot, and he could kind of see why Josh didn't want to be the only one who knew that, the only one with those memories in his head, and it was so messed up that instead of being upset about it Tito was just jealous that he hadn't remembered any of that himself.

Josh was still looking at him though, wearing a fixed stare that made Tito think he was anticipating something much worse in response, but Tito wasn't going to throw any stones from inside his own extremely glass-walled house.

"Uh, yeah," Tito said, rushing to reassure him. "I kinda figured, I remember that part, I just don't know why we wound up in a chapel instead of a public bathroom."

"It seemed like a good idea at the time," Josh said, and then he seemed to catch himself. "Wait, you're way calmer about this than I thought you'd be."

Than he worried he’d be, Tito had no trouble in translating that as.

Tito shrugged at him and wondered how much more he had to lose, really? If Josh was ready to admit this much, then Tito might as well commit and jump into the play as he set it up; it wasn't as if it could make anything worse.

"You're hot, man. You don't think pretty much anyone would be down for getting in on that if they could? I mean, in front of our teammates is probably not, uh, ideal, but. I never knew you were up for hooking up with guys before, you know?"

Josh was gaping at him, and it was only because he was a very attractive man in general that he didn't look totally stupid doing so. Tito would've looked royally dumb if it was him, he figured.

"You—didn't— _I_ didn't know that you were!"

Tito quirked a half-smile at him. "Means I was doing it right, doesn't it? If no one could tell."

"Right," Josh said slowly, like Tito was a puzzle he was trying to solve, and maybe one he wasn't convinced had all the pieces.

Tito figured he could hand him a corner piece, then, if they were doing this honesty thing.

"You're better looking than most of the guys I've woken up with, if that's any consolation."

Josh's eyes widened almost imperceptibly, though Tito couldn't tell for sure if that was because he'd outright admitted to sleeping with guys, plural, or if it was the compliment. Usually Josh just smiled broadly and rolled with any of the compliments that came his way, acknowledging them without demurring or making too big a deal of them. It would've been a little infuriating, how unflappable he was, if Tito didn't know that he had very good reasons for carrying himself that way. And Tito was going to be the last guy ever to criticize anyone else's coping strategies, thanks.

"Tito, how much do you remember about last night?" Josh pinned him with a look, and Tito wasn't going to be able to equivocate his way out of that one.

"I think maybe I stuck my hand down your pants," Tito said. "You know. After we'd been kissing."

It was a little hazy, getting towards the part of the night that was impressions in flashes rather than full narrative memories, but he had the shape of that much clear, and it was exactly what he would've guessed he'd do, if he'd been placing bets.

"Oh," Josh said. "I wasn't sure I remembered that right. You, uh. Didn't seem the type."

Tito wasn't sure whether that meant Josh didn't think he was the type to stick his hands down someone else's pants in public or the type to kiss boys in general, and he didn't want to interrupt this very educational conversation to find out, but he filed it in the back of his mind for later all the same.

Tito shrugged. "Well, now you know."

Of course, it remained to be seen how many other people also knew now, but Tito wasn't going to let himself panic about that until he absolutely had to. There were a couple guys he didn't mind knowing, at least, and he was pretty sure they were the ones who'd been around the longest, the latest.

A couple of knowing, indulgent expressions floated to the top of his memory and he had to hastily self-correct that. Yeah, a couple of them had maybe been less than surprised. Definitely less surprised than he'd been when his rash, impulsive decision to dance up on Josh as shamelessly as he knew how was rewarded with Josh grinding right back against him, his hand curling hot and heavy around Tito's hip. That it had taken him all of a minute to work it under his shirt and onto bare skin had been possibly the most encouraging sixty seconds of Tito's life.

Josh made a complicated face at him, and Tito shrugged one shoulder.

It was fine, it wasn't like he minded, much. If no one was saying shitty stuff, that was pretty much enough for him. He didn't need pride tape and awkward PSAs that no one entirely believed in, he just wanted the faith his team would have his back, and he had that already.

In fact, Tito thought, what was much more crucial for the current moment was wondering about what _Josh_ needed. Josh had to deal with ten times as much shit as Tito ever had, and he wasn't exactly unaware of that, however shitty and unfair it was. And if Josh asked him to pretend like nothing had ever happened, or even wanted Tito to call it drunk and stupid or anything like that, well. Tito was going to do it. He owed Josh that much, if nothing else.

"Right," Josh said slowly, still turning his phone over and over between his hands, a nervous gesture that made Tito simultaneously want to hug him and also want to shrink into a corner of the room so that Josh would stop looking like that.

The silence in the room felt almost palpable, and Tito's head was still tender and filled with noise, enough that some of it spilled over recklessly before he could quite think better of it.

"So, uh. Should I say sorry, now? That we're sober?" And feeling sorry for themselves, and certainly face-to-face with all the consequences of the night before.

And there were a lot more of _those_ than there would've been if it had 'just' been a drunken hookup. Tito almost regretted that they hadn't just found their way to the closest bathroom and gotten each other off, drunk and fumbling and too hot for it to make it last. Almost; though, because it wasn't like that would be a better morning after to have woken up in. At least this way the only things they couldn't take back were… legal paperwork.

Well, maybe it was as bad in a different way, he allowed.

Tito looked up, at last; told himself to be brave about this too, and found that he couldn't read the look on Josh's face. It was—something was going on there, and he was trying to keep it off his face, like if Tito knew what it was he was going to do something that Josh didn’t want. Josh should be allowed to keep his own secrets, Tito thought, hugging the few he hadn’t shared to himself a little tighter, but god, he just wanted to make Josh feel better, too.

Josh bit his lip, and Tito couldn't help but mirror it, letting his eyes drop to stare for just a split second.

"I think," Josh said slowly, and he was smiling, although there was something almost brittle about it. "If we're married anyway then maybe we should reap the benefits?"

Tito blinked at him.

"…do you mean we get a break on our taxes?"

Josh stared at him. "Excuse me?"

Tito wondered if this was one of those times where despite being fluent enough in English it was going to feel like listening to someone speak Klingon or one of the Lord of the Rings languages.

"People get married to get better taxes?" he said carefully. 

It obviously hadn't been why they'd done it, but if they were looking on the bright side, the silver lining, then maybe that counted. Or maybe not; Tito wasn't entirely sure how taxes worked in New York in particular or across the USA in general and that was why he was paying a very nice woman at his agent's office to take care of all of that for him. But it seemed like maybe it could be a thing. And they were both on entry level deals, so every little bit counted.

"What?" Josh said looking absolutely blank for a second, and then he shook his head firmly. "No, I mean, uh. Oh, fuck it," and then he stepped closer, and got both of his hands on Tito's face.

Tito was reminded, for the briefest of moments, of Josh's fingertips, light over his lip, checking to see if he was bleeding after catching a high stick a few games ago—and then Tito forgot all about that, because Josh was leaning in, tilting Tito's chin up and kissing him; soft and sweet and over all too quick.

Josh pulled back, and looked down at his own hands, dropping Tito's gaze. Tito let his eyes follow Josh's, looked down to see that he was fidgeting the way he did on the bench, when he'd been too long between shifts and was itching to get back out there again as soon as Dougie would let him.

The way he did when he wasn't sure of himself, however poised he liked to act.

"Oh, you want to—?" Tito said, and then realized he didn't know what words to use.

Not for—with Josh, when he didn't know what this was either. Was it just friends, buddies? Did Josh want to fool around while neither of them had a girlfriend, and while they were stuck together, joined on paper and legally? Surely he couldn't mean—

He wished Josh had kept kissing him, that was much easier to deal with than this.

"Gotta be a good sign you kissed me back, huh?" Josh said, jittery, bouncing on the soles of his feet like Pelly did after too much coffee. Or like Barzy did when he just had too much energy to burn.

Tito had a brief, graphic thought about all the ways Josh was welcome to use his energy and felt himself flush darkly, hot and pink all over, probably right to the tips of his ears.

"Or-wow, you're really red," Josh said. "Is this—you're not going to hulk out on me or anything? Are you embarrassed? Freaking out? Is this—"

"Oh my god," Tito said, pushed too far at last to keep tying himself in knots inside his own head. "Josh, shut up," and this time he took the initiative, reached up and tugged Josh's mouth down to meet his, slipping his tongue inside, taking his time to be as thorough as possible.

He could have sworn Josh tried to keep talking at first—there was definitely a mangled "okay" in there somewhere—but Josh got with the play again fast, kissed Tito back, his hands fisted tight in the fabric of his shirt. It was like he was trying to hold Tito close, like he couldn't get away, which was ridiculous, because why on earth would Tito want to go anywhere else?

They kept kissing, pressed closer and closer together, sharing breath and finding a rhythm that was easy to just drift along in, ebbing and flowing.

It was so silly, Tito thought, that they hadn't just done this when they'd woken up. He'd been right there, and Josh had been all warm and naked and in arm's reach, so why hadn't he reached out?

And it was silly that Josh thought Tito was going to freak out about this, even after they'd kissed last night, after they'd talked about doing more than that, when they'd apparently been seconds away from either semi-public sex or very obvious bathroom hook-ups.

If Tito had been going to freak out about all of this, he would—well, okay, he would be doing so right then, because he'd only really put together everything that had happened in the correct order since talking to Barzy, but that was beside the point. Kissing Josh was eminently preferable to freaking out about kissing Josh, and Tito was going to keep doing it for as long as he could possibly get away with it.

Tito let himself push back the way he wanted to after that realization had sunk in. He ran his hand over Josh's hip, back over the curve of his ass, let his thumb tug the waistband away from Josh's skin before he stopped, waiting whatever response that was going to earn him.

It was an incredibly gratifying one when it came.

Josh made another noise into his mouth, surging forward to kiss him harder, and started tugging at Tito's shirt, trying to get it untucked from his pants.

Tito broke the kiss for a moment, breathing hard, and said, a little frantic, "Can I—you want this, yes?"

"Yes, oh god, come on," Josh said, fast, his voice a little higher than usual. "Beau— _Anthony_ —fuck, yes. You're so hot, I just wanna—"

Tito was actually curious where that sentence had been going—it made his stomach flip with eager butterflies to hear that Josh wanted him, to hear how much and how emphatically he was into this—and he also kind of wanted to know how he'd say it, but Josh was also impatient, just as impatient as he was, really, and rather than laying out any kind of plan he just went straight for Tito's flies, tugging the button undone and yanking the zipper down.

Tito hissed and tried not to flinch. Josh's hands were big and sure and steady, and he was into all of those things, but for once he wasn't being particularly careful and Tito was, well. Turned on enough that his dick had been pressing against the zipper already, aching to be freed. It turned out Josh's hand felt just as good on Tito's dick as he could have hoped, giving him a quick stroke that made him almost whimper, Josh's hand curled protectively around the shaft, fingertips nudging at the head and teasing.

It felt—too good, even dry, just so right that he had to force himself to exhale, to stop holding his breath while he waited to see what Josh's next move was going to be. He had some moves of his own, too, come to think of it, so Tito let himself be daring in return, slid his hands into the back of Josh's pants to cup his ass. And fuck, he had a great ass, it was honestly shocking Tito had made himself wait this long before really letting himself look, let alone touch.

"Nice," Josh mumbled, and then he tightened his fingers on Tito's dick, making him hiss. "I'm gonna blow you later," Josh promised, and Tito bit his lip and told himself passing out from lust would be so embarrassing Josh probably wouldn't want to have sex with him after, so he needed to get it together already, "But right now, can I just—this is okay, right?"

"Yes, _yeah_ ," Tito said, breathy and desperate. "Just don't stop, please."

"Yeah, that's not gonna happen," Josh assured him, and kept moving his hand, ducking his head down so he was nuzzling at the side of Tito's throat, sucking hard at a patch of skin just above his collar, just low enough that his shirt would hide the mark.

Probably.

It was definitely going to leave a mark, stinging in a way that made Tito want to squirm, the good kind of pain that made his dick throb, leaking over Josh's fingers.

"Fuck, you’re so hot like this," Josh added, and Tito told himself he was not—absolutely not—going to be embarrassed by this, that he would just enjoy the way that Josh seemed to appreciate him and not second-guess things. Josh sure seemed happy enough, humming to himself as he left a trail of biting kisses down Tito's neck, his hand still moving on Tito's dick, getting him there with a casual confidence that made Tito feel like his hair was gonna catch fire.

Josh had been touching him long enough that Tito couldn’t keep still, squirming against him and trying to cling onto the shreds of self-control he had left after being this wound up, after waking up with Josh, after finding out how close they’d gotten the night before. He wasn’t sure how much longer he was going to be able to hold out, now that it was happening for real, his dick jerking against Josh’s palm, leaking steadily.

"You close, babe?" Josh asked, leaning in while he pushed Tito's dick up so it was caught between their bodies, running his fingers down the shaft and then further down, skirting his balls and going for his perineum, fingertips rubbing gentle circles over the sensitive skin.

Tito thought his eyes might be rolling back in his head, and his reply definitely wasn't words, was just a strangled gulp and a few stray consonants, the syllables spilling off his tongue about two seconds before he spilled all over Josh's wrist, come streaking slick and pale between them.

"Fuck, that was hot," Josh groaned, dragging his knuckles up over Tito's abs before absently bringing his hand back up to his mouth and licking his hand clean.

Tito's knees went weak. Jesus, if Josh did this to everyone he slept with then Tito had no idea how anyone ever got out of bed long enough to do anything else.

"You're telling me," Tito said, still staring fixedly at Josh's mouth, his full lower lip, framed nicely by the dark beard that he seemed to have no trouble growing or maintaining. Tito was equal parts still kind of turned on and jealous about that, really. "Why do you still have clothes on, get naked, Sanger."

"Your wish, etc," Josh said, with a smirk, and he dropped his hands to his own belt, yanking it undone and letting his jeans follow in remarkably quick order.

"Did you just say 'et cetera' in the middle of sex?" Tito asked.,

"You wanna chirp me or you wanna fuck?" Josh asked, and honestly, it wasn't even a question.

"I was thinking I could, ah, put my mouth where my money is?" Tito said, hoping he had the idiom the right way around this time. Sex kind of scrambled his braincells in a way that made his English go a little screwy sometimes. Josh wasn't laughing at him though, Josh was actually staring wide-eyed as Tito went down onto his knees in one swift, graceful movement, his hands coming up to help Josh yank his underwear down over his hips.

For once, Josh didn't seem to have much of a comeback, just reached out to run his thumb over Tito's cheek, the callouses catching a little where his much less impressive attempt at a beard darkened his jaw line.

"Okay, yeah, you can—do that," Josh said, swallowing hard as he looked down at Tito, licking his lips.

God, Tito wanted to just—kiss him all over, he wanted to eat him up, make him feel good, get him to feel as good as he'd made Tito feel. And he could start that right then and there, he thought, before dragging his gaze back down again, focusing on his dick, right there in front of Tito's face.

It was typical, he thought; Josh was good looking all over, of course he'd have a pretty dick, too. He was hard, of course, but it was equally gratifying to see the way he was tense all over, with Tito breathing lightly over his dick, the way it was flushed darker with blood, precome starting to collect at the head.

Yeah, Tito was practically itching to see how he'd taste, how he'd feel in his mouth, and making it good and wet wasn’t going to be difficult at all, not the way that Tito’s mouth was watering, until he had to swallow hard or wind up drooling all over himself, all before he’d even gotten to touch Josh properly..

He ran his hands down from Josh's hips to rest lightly on the outside of his thighs, feeling muscle flex under his hands while Josh shivered, his hips twitching forward in an aborted movementlike he’d been trying to thrust forward and caugt himself just in time. If what Josh was trying to do was lower the pressure on Tito, well, he appreciated that, but he didn't need it; he knew what he wanted and he was going to get it.

Tito leaned in, slow enough that Josh could see what he was doing, and wrapped his lips around the head of Josh's dick, letting the weight of it press down on his tongue, letting Josh fill his mouth up, musky and warm and wet.

"Fuck, Tito," Josh said, low and hoarse, and then, a little more desperately, "Uh, can I—is this okay?"

Josh let his palm brush over the side of Tito's head, smoothing his hair down, clearly looking for a very specific type of permission. 

His hands were gentle on Tito’s scalp, fingers pushing through the strands of hair, blunt nails scratching gently in a way that made Tito want to turn to putty in his hands, somewhere between satisfaction and sharp need. Tito felt that want curl through him, let it drive him even as he nuzzled into Josh, heat stoking between them. 

“Tito,” Josh said again, his voice shaking, and he sounded so fucking careful, like he wanted this as badly as Tito did but somehow—despite Tito coming all over his hands a minute ago and then diving for his dick like he was starving for it—not sounding like he was sure he was even allowed.

Tito wasn’t going to let him doubt that for a moment longer.

He pulled back for just a second and looked up at Josh, felt the shock of that connection as their eyes met ripple through him, electric-hot and said, voice thick and rough, letting himself sound as needy as he felt, "Yeah, you can. Pull if you want to, uh, too."

Josh made a low groan in the back of his throat and threaded his fingers through Tito's hair again without even waiting a second longer, rubbing little circles over his scalp as Tito went right back down, letting himself take everything he wanted in turn He’d be lying if he tried to say he’d never imagined this, never wondered what it’d be like, but the reality—Josh all messy and real under him—blew that out of the water. 

Josh was a remarkably considerate guy by the standards of most of the blowjobs Tito had ever given; he pulled a little at his hair, and he made a lot of gratifyingly helpless-sounding noises, clearly enjoying himself, clearly encouraging Tito to keep going, but he didn't thrust forward too much or make Tito choke, and he didn't try to shove his head further down. He just felt—good; solid and hot under Tito's hands, inside his mouth, his voice just as warm as he told Tito how good he was, how good he was making Josh feel, how close he was.

"Gonna come," Josh warned, his voice still soft, but Tito could've guessed that by the way his palm flexed against the side of Tito's head, fingers going slack and nerveless, till he was just cupping his hand around the back of Tito's head, panting, clinging on to the very last little scraps of his control.

He could have pulled off in time, especially since Josh was giving him every opportunity to do so, his hands gone slack on Tito’s head, but Tito didn't want to do that; he wanted to feel every inch of Josh, to get him off and enjoy every second of it.

Josh swore and shook against him, coming in slow pulses across his tongue, voice shaking and thighs twitching under Tito's hands. 

Once Tito was sure he was done he pulled off carefully, swallowing and wiping his mouth off of whatever he'd missed, scrubbing the back of his hand over his chin just in case. His eyes were watering just a little, too, overwhelmed, and maybe he'd pushed himself a little too far by the end there, but it had been so good.

Tito blinked hard, still feeling shaky, and okay, maybe there’d been some tears in there as well, but if Josh didn’t say anything then Tito was going to pretend like it was just—sweat and a little too much strain on his jaw. 

Josh took a couple of stumbling steps backwards and sat down hard on the end of the bed.

"That was so good," he said a little dumbly, before catching Tito's eyes and giving him the full-wattage grin that he'd come to know and appreciate over the last year, ever since Josh had come up to the big club, playing his way into the conversation and refusing to give anyone a good reason to take him out again.

"I guess," Tito said, but he couldn't quite help himself and beamed right back, before taking Josh’s offered hand and pulling himself back to his feet, turning to sit on the end of the bed beside him, but not quite touching. Just in case.

"I would do that again," he said, and then caught himself, Josh hadn't exactly said what was on the table here, and maybe he shouldn't assume. "If you want to," he added quickly, and looked down at his feet for a moment—fuck, he still had socks on, they hadn't even got all the way naked. God, Tito wanted to do this again.

"I want to," Josh said, not missing a beat. "Hey, come here. Uh, unless you don't do the cuddling thing."

Tito blinked but didn't hesitate for more than a split-second. He could pretend to be cool about this, or he could admit that he did in fact want to curl up next to Josh, wrap himself up in the intimacy and connection of this moment. They might have sex again; Tito hoped they were going to have a lot of sex, but they were never going to have sex for the first time again. And Josh gave good hugs, so Tito figured spooning would be good too.

"Cuddling sounds good," he said, grimacing a little at the words coming out of his mouth. Josh was so effortlessly cool even when by all rights he was being a gigantic nerd, and Tito just wanted to keep up.

"Score," Josh said, and okay, so maybe Tito was overrating his degree of coolness. Or maybe he was just crushing so hard he couldn't even see straight.

That probably was more likely, really.

It wasn't particularly dignified, but the two of them managed to clamber onto the bed and stretch out, snuggled close together on top of the covers. Tito kicked his socks off and sat up long enough to peel his shirt off, which just seemed to serve as a reminder to Josh, who did the same. And then, there they were, close enough to be sharing breath and body heat, finding out that they seemed to fit together just as nicely off the ice as on it, and Tito just grinned, letting himself enjoy the moment.

"This could be better," Josh murmured eventually, and Tito felt a flutter of disquiet in his stomach before he went on. "We could make out some more?" he suggested, and, well.

He had to admit that, generally speaking, Josh had good ideas.

* * *

Making out, somewhat inevitably, turned into more sex.

This time at least they were both actually naked, and a little more comfortable with each other, and even that passing familiarity made it easier to fall into each other, gave them ideas of what the best type of pressure and touches were going to be. Tito was pretty sure that both of them lasted a little longer this time, less desperation giving them some more time to enjoy it all, but it was still all hands and mouths and nerves and skin, and not the slightest bit of dignity left to anyone.

Catching his breath afterward, Tito rolled over and caught the time on the alarm clock and felt the cold finger of dread press right up against his neck.

It was—later than it should've been.

"Oh shit," he hissed, and Josh didn't need to know a lot of French to understand that one; sitting bolt upright in response.

"What?" he asked, frowning down at Tito.

Tito struggled to sit up as well, feeling more than a little wrung out all over. Hangovers and sex and not a whole lot of sleep were taking more of a toll than he quite liked to admit.

"It's late," Tito said. "We can probably get back to the hotel in time, but we need to go, uh, now."

Unsaid in that was the knowledge that they were going to have to leave the quiet oasis of an enormous hotel room to themselves. That they did not in fact have more time left to talk this through and decide what they were going to do about _all_ of it. And that they were going to have to face a whole lot of teammates who'd seen something or probably heard something about what they'd been doing the night before.

Tito trusted his teammates not to be assholes beyond ordinary teasing, but he didn't think that extended to not gossiping, and in his experience, anything this juicy was going to be around the locker room quicker than you could think it, just about.

He was also not going to let himself think too deeply about how all of that could fuck things up between him and Josh.

Because Tito was only just barely starting to let himself admit that there was something there that he cared that much about not fucking up, and he definitely wasn't at the point of admitting that to anyone else. 

Not even Josh.

"Oh shit," Josh agreed, scrambling out of bed, and Tito let himself have one moment longer to just appreciate the view before they both started pulling clothes back on and trying to get themselves suitable for public consumption.

Checking out of a hotel without really having any luggage was a new and somewhat disquieting experience; Tito checked his pockets three times and could feel his phone and his wallet every time, but still felt like he was forgetting something, and if Josh's fidgeting was any indication he seemed to feel the same.

The plastic door card that Tito had found on the low table by the door to their suite felt cold and hard in his hand as they waited for the elevator down to the lobby, and he had to concentrate to keep his grip on it, hand sweatier than it should've been in such an aggressively air-conditioned building.

He steeled himself for a horrifying bill when he handed it over to the extremely well-dressed woman smiling at the both of them from behind the reception desk, and was ready to pull out his credit card and call it a very expensive lesson, but when he flipped his wallet open she just waved it off and said, "No, no, your bill's been paid already." 

She gave them another warm smile, and Tito noticed, belatedly, the expensive looking bracelet dangling from her wrist with a gemstones in a subtle rainbow pattern, and the thick silver band on her ring finger. "Your friend said to consider it a, uh, wedding present, was it?"

Tito couldn't help himself—it was _nice_ not to be hiding, for once—and beamed right back at her automatically with a "Thank you, it was, uh—lovely."

He didn't let himself look at Josh while he said that; there was no chance either of them would be able to refrain from blushing or stumbling over their words even worse than that.

"Well, we hope to see you again some time," she said, and Tito nodded, and leaned into Josh for a second before he could quite remember that he shouldn't, even if she—well, was assuming exactly the right things.

"Thank you," Josh said, curling his hand around Tito's upper arm and elbow before tugging him gently towards the door, and Tito just let himself go with it.

So what if they looked kind of coupley? It was the middle of the week and they were checking out of a hotel where they had, oh right, just _had sex_ , after getting married, and no one who knew them was there to see it anyway, so fuck it, why not?

Josh must have been thinking along similar lines because he stopped dead right as they walked outside and nudged Tito back against the wall before leaning in to kiss him, fast and hot and hard.

Tito kissed him back, didn't think to do anything else until Josh pulled away and said, "Sorry, I just—wanted to do that one last time."

Before they go back to the team and back to normal life, Tito filled in for him.

Before they never talked about this again, and worse, probably never did it again, either, he didn't have to add, because it was so broadly obvious, and Tito's stomach hurt.

How was it possible that he'd woken up to discover he'd drunkenly gotten married to one of his teammates and like two hours later had made everything even worse?

Tito just followed Josh silently into the back seat of the cab and didn't say a word the whole—thankfully short—drive back up and off the strip to the team hotel.

* * *

"Uh, I guess we'll catch up later?" Josh said, sliding across the back seat to follow Tito out of the cab before leaning back in to pay.

Tito blinked at him, trying to bring his focus back to the there-and-now instead of dwelling on the endless cycle of wondering how the hell they were going to get out of this mess.

"Sure, yeah, that's—I mean, okay, yeah," he agreed.

It seemed easier to just let Josh retreat to get some space for himself than to try and talk themselves in circles some more. And sure, Tito wasn't exactly upset about the idea of getting some private time himself to do the same thing, but it was hard not to feel rejected for a moment.

He watched Josh head down the hallway to his own room, and wished it didn't feel like they were making an even bigger mistake.

Shaking it off, Tito dug his own room key out of his wallet and headed for his own room.

It might be something of a downgrade, he figured, pushing the door open as the lock clicked, going from the Bellagio to a regular hotel, but at least now maybe things could go back to normal. He just needed a couple hours to get his head together, and then to figure out what they were going to do, and not at all let himself dwell on the whole 'having had sex with Josh' thing.

Well, not for more than five minutes or so, anyway. Tito was a realist, after all.

A realist who had not, in fact, remembered that the other thing about his normal, regular hotel room was that it wasn't _just_ his. Whatever expectation of privacy Tito might have had popped like a soap bubble as he took one step inside the room and saw Mat's head pop up from under the covers of the other bed like a meerkat.

A meerkat with incredibly messy hair and an overactive interest in Tito's sex life.

"You're back!" Mat said gleefully. "So what's the deal, did the earth move, did one of you cry about how beautiful it was, was it good, why aren't you in Josh's room banging some more right now?"

Tito wished he was close enough to throw a pillow at Mat but sighing heavily was all he had, so it was what he did.

"You are very loud, Mathew," he said, hoping the tone would come across enough that he wouldn't have to talk this out to someone else before he'd even figured himself out.

"Oooh, right, I forgot you're hungover as fuck," Mat said, just as cheerfully, but at least fifty percent more quietly. That was a small mercy.

"Ugh," Tito said, which he felt portrayed his deepest feelings and was about as much information as he felt like sharing right then and there, and as punctuation, he crawled onto his bed and threw himself face down into the pillow.

The benefits of that were, of course, no longer having light in his eyes, and also not having to make eye contact with Barzy, but the disadvantage was that he could still _hear_ him, and Mat was like a dog with a bone, sometimes.

"You guys figured stuff out after you called me, though, right?" Mat said, and if Tito had been guessing he'd say he was tentative, which didn't make any sense; Mat was never tentative about anything, even when it didn't involve him and was kind of none of his business.

Mat was _nosey_.

Tito grumbled something into the pillow that he hoped Mat would take as an answer, but his luck was apparently very bad because instead he felt the mattress dip as Mat sat down beside him, and then patted his shoulder kindly.

"I believe in you, man," Mat said, very seriously, and Tito strongly considered trying to find out if he could suffocate himself in a pillow, because the only thing worse than Barzy chirping was Barzy being too nice to chirp.

"Fuck my life," he muttered, very definitely in English this time so Mat couldn't pretend not to have understood him.

"Yeah, I think you did that all by yourself," Mat said, back to cheerful, and then he was getting up and finally leaving Tito alone. "I'm going to hang out with Boych and Leds, let me know when you're done with your pity party, eh?"

Tito just tried to bury himself further into the pillow, and the door clicked shut behind Mat.

Yeah, Tito and Josh had rather comprehensively fucked up their own lives, that was for sure.

* * *

Tito managed to hide out in his hotel room for another couple of hours, but it was very clear that unless he wanted to come up with something embarrassing as a plausible excuse for missing the eam dinner then he was going to have to face other people some time, and that was as good a time as any.

Reassuringly, no one said anything when he walked into the dining room they were set up in, and he paused for a fraction of a second before going to sit with Josh anyway. It wasn't like he could avoid Josh forever either, and it wasn't like he really wanted to.

"Hey," Josh said, giving him a smile that wasn't nearly as broad as usual, but still felt genuine.

Tito could see the way his eyes crinkled in the corners, anyway and that more than anything else made him feel a hundred times better.

"Hi," Tito said. "Uh, how was—the rest of your afternoon?"

And shit; there he was blushing again, despite his better judgment remembering what he and Josh had done earlier in the day, instead of moving on and finding a way to not make everything a hundred times more awkward.

"Mostly I drank a lot of water and Pelly made fun of me," Josh said, shrugging a little. "And then I got down here and Barzy keeps giving me weird looks, so I wanted to ask if there was anything you needed to tell _me_?"

Tito blinked.

"Mat's doing what?" he asked, and glanced over to the other table, where Mat was trying to do his best to look like he hadn't just been creepily staring at them. Mat had not discovered a talent for subtlety at any later point in the afternoon after he'd left Tito to nap, that was for sure.

"That," Josh said pointedly, and rolled his eyes in Mat's direction.

Mat stuck his tongue out for a second and then seemed to remember they were all supposed to be acting like adults.

"Barzy is being… Barzy," Tito said, and when Josh didn't seem to get what he meant by that, he added, "He's making fun of me. For being hungover, and, uh," he didn't want to say 'lovesick' because that seemed like a bad thing to say at dinner around all of their teammates and also just in general, so Tito just waved his hand expressively and hoped that whatever Josh filled in there was less embarrassing than Tito's reality.

"Right," Josh said slowly, so Tito was giving that about a fifty percent chance of having worked.

"Anyway," Tito said, bulling ahead in the hopes of getting all of the awkward out of the way before anyone else sat with them and would necessarily overhear, "I guess we should talk more later, but without—"

"An audience," Josh finished, and Tito nodded gratefully.

"Exactly."

It took a few minutes after that for either of them to find a topic of conversation that seemed neutral enough, but trash-talking the guys they knew on the Knights and then making fun of Barzy just loud enough that he could hear his name but not what they were saying seemed to do the trick quite nicely. Enough that Tito almost forgot for a while everything that was going on and just let himself enjoy the rhythm of being around his friends and his team, out on a roadie with nothing bigger on their minds than two points and where to celebrate getting them.

In that order, too, because as much as they'd gotten some leeway the night before, Tito knew damn well no one was going to be going out with the game tomorrow. Not with the way every other team in the league seemed to be playing as soon as they got over the Nevada border.

The tables got louder as more guys made their way downstairs, and Tito almost hadn't noticed quite how tense he was until he finally started to relax when no one said anything to him or Josh, or gave them funny looks or did anything other than chirp them in the exact same ways they usually did.

It was almost nice, or at least as nice as a hotel dinner with like twenty guys he spent all his time with could be.

* * *

Tito hadn't been sure he would, but apparently the combined forces of lack of sleep and the dregs of his hangover meant that he had no trouble dropping off to sleep that night, out cold what felt like the moment his head hit the pillow.

Barzy had been a lot closer to normal the rest of the evening, only a little more solicitous than usual, which pretty much just meant that he let Tito have the remote without arguing and he asked if he wanted the bathroom first before going in to do whatever else he did along with brushing his teeth and washing his face before bed. 

Tito hadn't asked yet what it was that took him twice as long as Tito spent in there, and he was going to continue to not ask as long as humanly possible, if only because he could tell that Mat kind of wanted him to.

You had to make your own fun on the road, right?

He woke up early, feeling pretty much recovered and a little too clear-headed.

Enough so that even though he tried to roll over and go back to sleep—he had at least half an hour until the alarm went off—he failed significantly..

With resignation, he picked up his phone to scroll through; maybe he could catch up a little, or at least it'd give his hands something to do while he tried to actually think properly about the situation he was in.

Scrolling through Insta to check in on the boys gave him something to do for all of about five minutes, and he couldn't even think of a decent chirp for PL's latest post, so he just tagged him with a bunch of emojis and figured that was going to have to be good enough.

He startled as his phone buzzed softly in his hand, the screen flashing bright enough that he yanked the blanket over his head so that it wasn't going to wake Mat up as well. It wasn't, like he'd figured at first, anyone replying to his comments or giving him shit for how he hadn't posted since the pre-dinner drinks and was he, like, dead or whatever—it was honestly kind of surprising no one had said that yet, really.

It was Josh, messaging him in private—Tito double checked that before even clicking the bubble to reply—and asking if he was awake yet.

Well, at least they were pretty much on the same wavelength there.

 _Yeah_ Tito sent back, _You wanna hang out for a bit or something?_

It sounded stupid and kind of lame and he wanted to cringe even saying it, but he also wanted to see Josh, even if things were still awkward, and the one good thing about being awake so much earlier than almost anyone else on their team was that they could probably get some kind of private moment if they were smart about it.

 _yeah_ Josh replied. _meet at the elevator?_

They were on the same floor at least, so Tito nodded reflexively and then actually replied _k gimme five_.

He slid out of bed as soundlessly as possible and tried to tug enough clothing out of his suitcase that he would pass for decent (by Vegas standards if nothing else) without making any extra noise, and the two extra inches he had to yank the zip open to do that sounded loud enough to wake the dead. 

Mat snored on obliviously, at least.

Tito checked he had everything he was likely to need before breakfast, stuffed his room key into the back pocket of his sweats and snuck out the door. It was kind of like a walk of shame, except in reverse, and wasn't that just ridiculous after he'd already lived the Vegas cliche anyway?

Josh was—not so much lurking by the elevator, it was too well lit for that, but he was slouched against the wall, phone in his hand, the perfect illustration of Waiting. He clearly still hadn't shaved, for going on a week, easily, not that Tito was tracking it or anything, and he looked bright-eyed and much more well-rested than Tito felt, and—goddamn, Tito was so fucking hot for him, he was fucking doomed.

Tito swallowed hard, ordered his dick to stop getting ideas already, and walked a little faster over to join Josh, raising one hand in a vague wave.

"Hey, man," he said, firmly shoving the urge to lean in for a kiss way back down into the metaphorical tunnel of Bad Ideas and Things Tito Wasn't Thinking About Right Now, Thanks.

"Tito," Josh said easily, and smiled at him, eyes crinkling up with it, and maybe Tito's subconscious needed to redecorate or pick up some new hobbies, because that was more than enough to get him started imagining all kinds of things again. There was something about the way Josh said his name, and he was only half sure he was reading too much into it.

But fifty fifty wasn't actually good odds and Tito knew as well as anyone that the house always won, especially in Vegas, so he gave himself one last 'down boy' pep talk and let himself knock shoulders with Josh in a way that was one hundred percent firmly just One of the Boys.

"You wanna go get breakfast?" Tito asked.

It seemed like the way to go; they could pretty much always eat, and Tito also didn't trust himself to have a conversation with Josh when there wasn't an audience there to remind him to behave. Definitely better to keep his mouth full with—well, whatever stuff the hotel had out for their breakfast. And he really needed to stop thinking in double entendres.

"Yeah, I guess," Josh said, and they made their way downstairs to find food.

It was, Tito realized, maybe the first time they'd actually had breakfast together, other than room service the morning before, which he wasn't counting because it was just too weird and too obviously something that would never happen again.

But leaving aside things he was decided Not Thinking About, it was kind of nice to sit with Josh and just talk to him, just the two of them, with no teammates around being loud or gross or chewing with their mouths open, or chirping one or both of them.

It was easy, and Tito drank his coffee and fidgeted with his knife and fork once his plate was clean, and kind of wished they could do all of that for longer.

"You wanna go for a walk?" Josh asked, not quite looking at Tito.

That made his shoulders tense up, and Tito could see that Josh was on edge again all of a sudden too. And okay, he probably should've seen this coming; there was no way they weren't going to talk at some point. He'd just sort of hoped maybe they could put everything on pause for a few days and then figure it all out.

But Josh was impatient or maybe he was braver than Tito or maybe both. Whatever it was, Tito wasn't going to be enough of a chicken to back out now.

"Sure thing," he said, and miraculously they made it out of the hotel without running into anyone else from the team at all. 

Maybe a few of the guys would wonder where they were when everyone else came down for breakfast, but there was enough of a crowd that their absence wouldn't stand out, and people drifted in and out first thing in the morning as it was, it wasn't like anyone had to be anywhere until the team meetings.

It probably shouldn't have been a surprise that the street was just as busy that early in the morning as it had been the afternoon they'd landed; but this was Vegas where the party never ended, or at least it didn't for the visitors. Tito wasn't sure whether he liked that or not, now.

It had seemed a lot more fun when they were still two days away from their next game, drinking and laughing and he’d been thinking a little too much about kissing Josh. On the other side of that… he was having some second thoughts.

Although—he snuck a glance at Josh's face; wearing a faint smile, all Tito's attention drawn directly to full lips and the dark beard and goddamn he knew too much now about how all of that felt, how Josh tasted—he also couldn't say he'd do anything different if he could go back in time to change it.

Maybe not the marriage part, sure, because that had been a dumbass move. But he couldn't entirely regret making a move, not when Josh had met him with the equal and complementary reaction.

"And how are you feeling today, huh?" Josh asked, and Tito blinked, not having expected that approach.

"I'm good," he said cautiously, but letting himself walk closer to Josh as they passed people going the opposite way down the sidewalk. 

The pavement was wide, but there were a lot of people, some of them clearly dressed like they were heading to work and others like they were on their way home after a long, long night. Tito still felt a little sleepy but he was definitely doing better than some of the guys stumbling around clutching foot-long glasses and wearing tacky souvenir sunglasses. Well, there was an example they'd done better than, at least.

Tito wanted, he realized, to reach out and hold Josh's hand. He wasn't entirely sure where the urge was coming from—they were it public and he wasn't really a hand-holding sort of guy normally, was he?—but he wanted to.  
They walked a little longer, and Tito realized that he was being a dumbass again, and also rude, and what would his mother say? He needed to start saying things out loud and not just thinking in little circles about them.

"How are you?" he asked at last, and felt his stomach flip at the warm grin that stretched over Josh's face.

"Pretty good," Josh allowed, and he leaned in to bump his shoulder against Tito's, and it wasn't hand-holding, but it was something they could do it public, and that felt pretty good too.

* * *

They hadn't really talked more than that before heading back to the hotel again, all too aware of the time ticking down before the team meetings and all their usual game day commitments were about to get started. Mostly they just played tourist and people-watched and talked like nothing had changed between them at all.

It had been comforting at first: Tito didn't want anything to be weird between him and Josh, he wanted to be back to normal, except maybe for a value of normal where they could hook up again, and god, why couldn't he stop thinking about it?

But by the time they were back at the hotel, Tito had started to doubt himself again, telling himself that he was just giving in to wishful thinking.

The current evidence seemed to support that; Mat was sprawled beside him in a chair, rocking back and forth ever so slightly as he tipped it back—just far enough to annoy Clutter behind them but not enough that anyone further away would notice—and Josh was sat on Mat's other side, where Tito definitely couldn't 'accidentally' let their legs press together. They couldn't even really make eye contact well enough to both roll their eyes at Barzy together.

Which kind of sucked.

Partly because if Barzy was going to be the Calder favorite and setting the hockey world on fire and all that, it was Tito's duty as his friend to bring his ego back down to earth every so often, but mostly just because Tito had had a whole twelve hours or so of getting to touch Josh just as much as he wanted to, and he'd wasted most of it being asleep.

And he still wasn't entirely sure if Josh wanted to do any of that again.

The optimistic part of his brain was trying to point out that yesterday he'd been pretty convinced Josh didn't want to do it again and so somehow the too-early morning walk they'd had actually counted as progress, kind of, but Tito wasn't sure he wanted to get his hopes up that high for real.

It was easier to just lose himself in the normal game day routines from then: going over tape and spending some time in the weights room; getting lunch; napping; racing downstairs for the bus to the arena with Barzy, both of them running just late enough that they'd shared a look and wordlessly clattered down the fire stairs rather than taking the chance they'd have to wait for the elevator.

He dropped into his usual seat on the bus by Ebs, across the aisle from Barzy—the arena was only a couple of blocks away, really, but it was the habit that was important and not the specifics—and tugged his headphones on, drumming his fingers on his knee impatiently.

Now that the game was so close he just wanted to be out there, to start playing and get them back on the winning side of the ledger again.

And to stop thinking in circles about things he couldn't control.

For a split second, he remembered the hot, eager look on Josh's face as he'd promised to blow Tito later, and bit his own lip, hard.

He had to keep his head clear for the game, stop dwelling on shit he couldn't change. Like the pressure of knowing that according to the state of Nevada—and by extension, the rest of the United States, and also Canada and probably most everywhere else too—he was legally bound to Josh, and no amount of ignoring it was going to make that go away.

Fuck, he really had to call his agent, at least.

Mostly because he was pretty sure Philippe would yell at him a lot less than his parents were going to, if they ever found out.

"Beau," Ebs said, breaking into Tito's train of thought, his elbow all too pointy as it dug into Tito's ribs as additional punctuation, "We're here, c'mon man."

"Right, right, excuse me," Tito said, scrambling to his feet and following the rest of the guys off the bus. "I was distracted." Inevitably, his gaze landed on Josh's back where he was walking just ahead of Tito and Ebs, companionably shoulder to shoulder with Barzy, looking sharp in his suit.

"Sure you are," Ebs drawled, the chirp obvious in his tone for all that it was unspoken, and Tito felt himself flush bright red.

"I'm not—" he started to say. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Sure thing, kid," Ebs said, and Tito didn't bother to hide the way he rolled his eyes in response to _that_. He wasn't a kid and Ebs was like, five years older than him, okay.

Tito pulled his headphones back down over his ears and turned up Ariana Grande aggressively. Ebs could talk to himself, Tito was going to get in the zone.

* * *

He hadn't quite shaken off the mood by the time they hit the ice for warmups, though.

They skated out in the usual order after loosening up in the hallway as everyone went through their usual routines; fistbumps and high fives and hollering at each other and whooping for Jaro and high-fiving Clutter before heading down the tunnel. Tito stepped out onto the ice and waited for his usual calm to descend; he hadn't been this nervous since the first time they'd played the Habs at the Centre Bell, and this was obviously nothing even close to that amount of pressure or personal importance, although this building was certainly just as loud as the Canadiens fans had been.

He waited; he ran through the usual pregame drills that they always did, and he hovered just above the faceoff dot and sent the puck back and forth in a rapidfire volley with Mat until they were both breathless with trying not to laugh outright at each other; he did everything he always did for a game, and it still didn't feel quite right.

He caught Leddy shooting him a narrow-eyed look from by the glass, and Tito tried to pull his face into something approaching his normal expression, before dashing over to crash right into Leds' shoulder, their own little ritual within the game. Tito wasn't as superstitious as a lot of guys were, he _wasn't_ , but it usually settled him to have those exchanges with specific people before they got down to playing; to throw himself with full-bodied enthusiasm at Leds and know that they'd both be laughing as they bounce off the boards, and to get his head down and focus on tiny, critical movements with Barzy, and to find himself in between those moments, calm and ready to play.

But it just wasn't working in Vegas.

Leddy caught him by the elbow—one hand off his stick, enough leverage to tug Tito back into the corner boards when he tried to skate off like normal—and said, "Hey, Beau?"

Tito blinked at him. Nick didn't usually talk much right before the game to anyone; that was his part of the routine, and also kind of why it'd felt so special and so good that he and Tito had their own little thing before the puck dropped. It was part of what had made the whole thing about playing in the NHL finally feel real to him last year.

"Yeah?" he said, hoping Leds wasn't about to tell him to get his shit together. Tito knew he had to do that, thanks.

"You'll be fine, you know? Don't worry about it."

Tito frowned at him and then forced his expression to clear again. "Thanks?"

Leds gave him a stick tap, and then _smirked_ at him, his gaze flicking just over Tito's shoulder momentarily. "Trust me, it's gonna work out," and Leds side-stepped and skated smoothly off to follow Hickey in a smooth arc from the blueline and down the slot, picking up a puck halfway and flipping it casually over Jaro's shoulder.

Tito turned to see what he'd been looking at, absently kicking the puck at his feet to his stick while he did so, and promptly almost stepped on it as he caught Josh looking right at him, an expression on his face that Tito remembered seeing very clearly less than a day ago.

Their eye contact broke as a few of the other guys flew past, collecting stray pucks and stick-handling around each other, and Tito made himself follow suit. They had a game to win, and a point to prove, and even if they weren't doing so great in the standings, every little bit helped.

* * *

They were just settling in on the plane back to New York—2 points stashed away safely, an incredibly gratifying win against the Knights in the rear-view mirror along with all the bright neon lights of the Strip—when it hit Tito.

He was looking out the window as they taxiied, eyes just resting on the wash of color that overflowed from the casinos and hotels and tinted the whole sky blue even that late at night, thinking about taking it all in from ground level. 

Remembering the way they'd spilled out of the bar and into the street, arms around each other, handsy and drunk and flush with it all, and all it'd taken had been one perfectly inconveniently placed advertisement for a wedding chapel, mixed in between all the bars and strip clubs and nightclubs and guys in denim and ripped t-shirts handing out flyers for sex shows. Quiner laughing and egging them on until there they were, hand in hand in front of a a guy who'd aimed for Elvis and landed somewhere around an extra from Baywatch, and then they'd just been married, without anyone stopping them.

Tito let himself wallow and tried to remember more clearly what it'd been like, signing the paper that said he wanted to be with Josh, forever and all the way. Mostly, though, he wished he wasn't crystal clear on knowing that instead, they were going to have to get the whole thing cancelled somehow.

And then as the lights of Vegas fell away beneath them and the plane soared over the desert, Tito felt his stomach sink all the back down to ground level, because he was pretty sure if you wanted to get a marriage certificate annulled or cancelled or whatever, you kind of needed the actual certificate.

And he hadn't seen that since they'd woken up together and spent an hour panicking over it.

Tito took a deep breath in, held it until he felt like he was going to pop and then exhaled, all in a rush.

It was 2018. They'd be fine. Someone in the State of Nevada was probably going to know how to get a spare copy FedExed to him or whatever, and probably whoever had found it—whoever had cleaned up the room after they'd left in a hurry, and hadn't even had much cash to leave a decent tip—didn't know who they were. Didn't know that anyone would be interested that Anthony Beauvillier was married to Joshua Ho-Sang.

Tito took another deep breath, and told himself firmly to stop freaking the fuck out, and somehow, it more or less worked.

* * *

They had a couple of days before their next game, a home game at least, which meant time to catch up on all the little chores that piled up when you were away from home for a week and hadn't sent out laundry in even longer, and Tito caught himself thinking that maybe it would almost be easier to just buy five of the same shirt and tie combination next time, instead of trying to figure out for himself what worked on the day and getting pained looks from every guy on the team who thought they were a regular fashion model, _Barzy_.

No one was doing fancy photo shoots for Tito, that was for sure, at least not ones that didn't involve his Islanders jersey and a nice pair of jeans.

Taking care of all those little details he’d been avoiding for weeks also meant that Tito was perfectly positioned to avoid Josh as much as possible.

Josh was staying in Zeeker's spare room, catching rides to practice and games with him, and Tito had just managed to be a few minutes ahead or behind them into the locker room all week.

He'd thought he was being subtle about it—so what if it was the third time he'd stopped in the hall and pretended like he was reading the placard about the Dynasty that was on the wall just outside the room—but that illusion was rudely shattered by Ebs clearing his throat and giving Tito a look that pinned him right beside it.

"Hi?" Tito said, wishing that hadn't come out so clearly sounding like a question.

"Beau," Ebs sighed, before correcting himself. "Tito. Can we talk?"

Tito swallowed hard, considering and rapidly discarding multiple different responses to that.

"I, uh—" feeling hunted, Tito glanced around, and then relaxed into relief as he saw Johnny making his own way down the hall. Whatever Ebs wanted to talk to him about, he wasn't going to make it awkward with an audience, so Tito just needed to follow JT into the locker room and he could continue putting off dealing with anything for at least another day. It wasn't ideal, but it would be good enough.

Of course, he was underestimating Ebs there.

Jordan caught the frantic movement of Tito's eyes, twisted to see Johnny coming from over his shoulder, and gave Tito a grin that was all teeth and pure confidence. For a second, Tito remembered how many times him and Barzy had watched Ebs score that beauty against Russia at World Juniors, and had a moment of embarrassingly complete hero worship that he really thought he'd gotten over by then.

It was just enough of an opening for Ebs to take, too, whether he knew it or not, because Ebs grabbed Tito by the upper arm and dragged him right into the trainer's room beside them.

Tito didn't like to admit it, but he definitely made a higher-pitched kind of yelp at that, not expecting it. And sure, he'd seen Ebs bully guys off the puck often enough but he somehow hadn't quite expected to be the target. And especially not when neither of them was even wearing skates.

"Sit," Ebs said, pointing to the chair by the table, and Tito did as he was told, resigned to whatever was happening.

"You guys okay?" JT asked, sticking his head around the doorway, mouth quirked a little in an expression Tito couldn't read, although it sure looked like Johnny felt just as awkward about all of this as Tito did, if the way he was clearly trying to merge with the wall the rest of him was hidden behind was any indication.

"Yeah," Tito said, probably not terribly convincingly, and Ebs put it, "Liney business," so Tito nodded, because what else was he going to do?

"Okay," JT said, although his eyes flicked to Tito quickly one last time before he left. "Be gentle with him, eh, Ebs? We need the scoring."

"Fuck off," Ebs said cheerfully, and Johnny did just that, pulling the door closed behind him to leave them in relative privacy.

Tito was pretty sure he could feel his neck sweating.

"So I wasn't going to stick my nose in," Ebs started, "but it turns out I can't take you and Sanger mooning around like kicked puppies for another week, so can you please, _please_ figure out whatever you're fighting about and go back to mooning around like lovesick idiots instead, because it turns out that's actually way less irritating."

Ebs was saying 'irritating', but Tito didn't think he was far off base in taking the sympathetic expression on his face to imply that he meant it a little more kindly than that.

"Sorry?" Tito said, and sighed. "We're not, um. Fighting. Or anything. Really, Ebs."

Ebs sighed, and scrubbed his hand over his face.

"Well, whatever it is, you guys need to sort it out before it ends up on the ice." A bleak expression chased across his face for a microsecond, gone so fast that Tito wasn't entirely sure he'd seen it. "Because it will, if you don't do something." He paused, longer this time, and then twisted the knife. If Tito hadn't seen the mess Ebs had made of a perfectly good steak a week ago he'd almost call it surgical. "And if it does, well. We all know you're probably not the guy who's gonna get sent down over it."

Tito flinched, and swallowed hard. They both knew—they all knew Josh was under more pressure than most of them, for reasons that were as shitty as they were unfair, and if Ebs thought that Tito confronting the fact that his moping around could have consequences for Josh was going to make him do something—well, he was right.

"I'll fix it," Tito promised, still none too sure of what exactly he was going to be fixing or how, but newly determined to do it as soon as he had a chance.

"Fixing it doesn't have to mean you can't be together," Ebs said, not seeming to see the way Tito's eyes widened. "Like, do what you gotta, but you know everyone in our room is gonna have your backs. And not that you heard it from me, but it was honestly pretty cute watching you both try to pretend like it was going to take more than five minutes and three drinks before you were all over each other on the dance floor. And, obviously, wherever you ended up after that. I'm pretty sure you two crazy kids can work this out," Ebs said, and Tito didn't even try to hide the wince at that; did absolutely everyone know that they'd hooked up? He hadn't even remembered seeing Ebs after dinner. "Just—talk about it, get on the same page. Take it from an old married guy—"

Tito inhaled sharply. He thought after they'd sworn Quiner to secrecy and all that that much, at least, had stayed under wraps.

"—that, whoa, what now?"

Tito looked up, away from the spot on the knee of his slacks he'd been trying to stare at rather than make any kind of eye-contact in this wildly embarrassing situation, and found Ebs staring at him, a little confused, but mostly sympathetic.

"It's not—" he started to say, voice shaking and Ebs shook his head firmly.

"Beau, what's—are you freaking out?" If Tito hadn't been so freaked out about it, Ebs' obvious sympathy might have been more comforting.

"I didn't think anyone else knew!" Tito protested.

"Knew what? I don't have any idea—oh, Beau. Oh, no." Ebs stared at him, mouth open as he obviously put all of the pieces together. 

"You didn't know," Tito said, his stomach sinking.

"You got _married_?" Ebs hissed. Tito appreciated the belated effort towards discretion, at least.

"Not on purpose!"

"How do you get married by accident?"

Tito didn't really have an answer for that.

"Are you gonna—get it annulled, or something, then? If you guys were drunk?"

"Uh," Tito said, because he counted Ebs as a friend but he wasn't sure if they were quite at the level of friendship where he could admit they'd sobered up and then had sex anyway.

Ebs tilted his head to one side and looked at Tito silently, for long enough that it started to feel deeply uncomfortable.

"Do you _want_ to get divorced or whatever?" Ebs asked eventually.

"No!" Tito said, and then stopped dead. It sounded right, although it wasn't quite, exactly. He needed to think about this some more. Although preferably not right before practice, _tabarnak_.

"Well," Ebs said, and finally looked away. Tito let himself relax a little again. "I guess, uh, you know where we are if you want advice, just. Figure your shit out soon, okay? We need you guys."

"You got it, Ebs," Tito said. "Uh, can we go now? Before everyone goes all… gossipy." He knew JT wasn't going to say anything, at least, but that didn't mean anyone else had missed whatever level of conversation they'd been having through one fairly flimsy door.

"Good talk," Ebs said, before getting up and heading out the door, and Tito sat there for a second or two longer, wondering just how much of Ebs' little speech there was coming from personal experience. It sounded like there was something there, maybe.

He didn't have a whole lot of time to speculate, not with Dougie waiting out on the ice for them, not with all the speculation swirling around the team for purely hockey reasons, leaving aside all of his own personal drama.

"Fuck," Tito said softly, and then he followed Ebs out the door.

* * *

Tito made the effort, through practice, to actually look at Josh, instead of watching him through his peripheral vision and hoping they didn't get put on a line together. Kind of the exact opposite of how he'd started out the season, really.

It was somewhere between reassuring and a little shameful that Josh looked surprised when Tito caught his eyes; shocked for half a second and then he put his usual grin back on, and Tito thought he might be the only one out there who could see the faint touch of uncertainty hidden under it.

Tito hoped he wasn't giving anything away of his own thoughts, or at least not to anyone other than Josh, but he had a sneaking suspicion—judging from some of the other looks he was getting—that he wasn't nearly as good at that as he might hope.

He steeled himself towards the end of practice and glided over to Josh, just brushing past him as if he was going to the bench for a water bottle, and murmured, "Catch up afterward?"

Mentally crossing his fingers both that Josh would hear him well enough and that he'd agree, Tito was deeply relieved a moment later to catch Josh's quick nod in his direction, and warmed through by the smile he got as a follow up. 

Maybe… maybe this would be okay.

* * *

He kept his mind firmly on the ice after that, and got an approving nod from Ebs, and one from JT too, which was a little embarrassing. He wasn't even a rookie any more, he didn't _need_ his captain to be keeping that close of an eye on him, and it made him itchy to prove that he could handle this, that this was all just fine, thank you very much.

He did a good enough job of all of those things that it was almost a shock, afterward, to look up from his stall as he finished buttoning his shirt and see Josh standing a foot away waiting for him, already fully dressed, although not nearly as put-together as he usually looked.

"You want to get lunch?" Josh asked, voice soft as ever, and Tito smiled back at him reflexively before nodding and shrugging his jacket on.

"I could eat," he said. "You wanna just get the usual?"

The fact they had a usual by that point—and that Mat was not loudly inviting himself along with them for a change—probably signified something. If nothing else, it spoke volumes about the fact that Tito should really have come to some realizations about how he was in too deep weeks earlier.

"Works for me," Josh said, and Tito followed him out.

* * *

Without explicitly planning it, they kept their conversation strictly casual over lunch; just talking about the game ahead and going over the last time they'd seen the Panthers, going over the tiny little moments from that game that had stuck in their heads, the ones that didn't wind up on the tape they'd gone over after that game or before this next.

"We should do it in regulation," Tito said, "obviously, but I kinda—you know."

"You wanna see what Barkov will do in the shoot-out up close, eh?" Josh was teasing him, grinning broadly while his eyes were warm, and Tito couldn't even deny it, really.

"I want the points," he said, and Josh parried with, "But?"

Tito gave him a rueful grin, looking up through his eyelashes, caught and he knew it. "But yeah, kind of. A little. Do not tell Jaro I said that."

Josh shrugged at him. "It's okay, you have a hockey crush on him, I see how it is."

Tito's lunch congealed in the back of his throat for a second and he coughed, reaching for a glass of water and swallowing hurriedly.

By the time he'd caught his breath properly, Josh seemed to have realized that there was nowhere good for that conversation to go, and it had dried up, leaving them both in a silence that got heavier the longer it dragged on.

"You wanna come back to my place for a bit?" Tito asked. "To, to talk?"

He hoped the hurried addition of the last few words didn't sound as stilted as he thought it might; this would be a little easier in French but, if he was being honest with himself, not all that much more so. The worst and hardest part of any of this was going to be the part where they talked about their feelings, or at least Tito very much hoped it would be 'their' feelings. 

Josh just nodded, the playfulness gone from his expression.

Tito swallowed hard, and led him out the door. He wasn't looking forward to this at all; the sheer relief of having it be _over_ , one way or another, was about the only thing he could be sure of.

* * *

Once they’d made it to Tito’s place, he let Josh go sit on the couch while he grabbed them both drinks, and then the two of them just sat on the couch, waiting for someone else to start the conversation. It wasn’t the first time Josh had been at Tito’s place, not by a long shot, but it was the first time it had felt like this, all the things that had changed between them looming large and loud in the quiet.  
Any kind of silence was a rarity for them. Usually, one of them would be talking, or they'd be falling over each other's words in a hectic back and forth or a joking argument, or Tito would've put ESPN on in the background, or they'd be watching something; some kind of distraction for their eyes or their hands or both on deck.

Sitting on his couch with Josh's knee warm against his and Josh's face so unusually serious was novel in every way for Tito, and he wasn't sure he liked it.

He finished his glass of water, trying to drown out the feeling of his sandwich from earlier lying leaden in his stomach, and told himself to suck it up and just do it. One of them had to make the first move, and if it'd been Josh last time—the time that Tito needed to not let himself dwell on too much right then and there—then it was only fair if it was Tito this time.

He opened his mouth to start spilling his guts, struggled to get the words together to tell Josh how he felt, to at least lay himself open and honest.

And at the last moment, his nerve failed him, and what came out was, "Hey, uh, we need to talk about this whole marriage thing, right?"

"Yeah," Josh said slowly, his jaw set, unhappy. "I—just go ahead, Tito. It's a mistake, we fucked up, we have to undo it. That's what you're saying, right?"

Tito panicked, quietly, in the back of his mind, and wondered if he had a chance of getting out of this without yelling or crying. He wasn't going to be putting any bets on _that_.

"So yeah, obviously, it was a mistake, and we need to—uh, we should. Do something about that."

Josh didn't say anything.

Tito bit the inside of his cheek and tried to at least look calm. Faking it was half the battle, he just had to pick his way through this conversation and then… figure out how to get quietly divorced and also stop anyone else from ever finding out they'd been in this situation to start with.

"Okay," Tito said. "Okay. Well, uh, I don't know what happened to the marriage certificate but I guess we can probably still find out what we need to do to get, uh, divorced without it. I'm sure people lose them all the time, right?"

Josh made a strangled noise that drew Tito's eyes immediately, despite his best intentions of not actually making eye contact long enough to give away how much he hated doing this. He looked—

Something in Tito recognized the look on Josh's face and relaxed, dumped an overwhelming blend of adrenaline and hope and fear and lust right into the forefront of his brain and then left him to juggle that, steadied by the renewed sense that this might all work out somehow.

"I kept it," Josh said, chin up, not looking away from Tito. His jaw was set, like he thought Tito was going to yell at him or something like that, which couldn't have been further from the truth.

"I—" Tito started to say. "You, I mean. If it was a mistake, then why did you keep it?"

The silence yawed between them.

"Because it was still you," Josh said after a moment. "It was too soon and it wasn't either of our best ideas but I didn't want to make it not have happened. I still wanted you, Tito."

Tito swallowed, hard.

"I want you, too," he said. If Josh could be brave, so could he.

"Then why are you being weird about it?" Josh asked, his mask cracking a little at last, hurt and vulnerability peeking through. Tito felt like absolute scum.

"Because I want a divorce," he said, and Josh's face did something that Tito never wanted to make him do again, before he hurried to explain. "I want a divorce because I want to date you properly and get used to being with each other and then once we're good at that, too, I want to ask you properly, and not just because we're in Vegas and we're drunk and it seems like a good idea at the time."

"Oh," Josh said. "So that's—not a no, then."

"It's a lot of yeses," Tito said. "And also my maman will actually kill me if she misses out on my wedding, so next time we'll make sure our families are there too, okay?"

"Next time?" Josh said, and his grin was broader and happier and Tito relaxed at last because he could see Josh got it, Josh agreed, Josh believed him.

"I mean just because you are getting the milk for free doesn't mean the cow doesn't come along later," Tito said sunnily, and laughed out loud at the expression Josh made before replying "Please never use that saying again."

"You don't want the milk?" Tito asked, trying to do the thing with his eyebrows that Barzy had assured him was too sleazy for public consumption and also that if he did it again Mat was going to put it on insta and tag Chabby and the rest of the boys to weigh in too, which had been an effective enough threat that Tito had behaved, after that.

He was pretty sure that doing it to Josh was just fine, though.

The strangled noise Josh made in response before leaning in and getting his hands on Tito's face and kissing him _hard_ seemed to be a point in favor of Tito's theory, that was for sure. He didn't stop trying to kiss him either, not even when it made the process of crawling into Tito's lap without tipping either of them off the couch about a hundred times more difficult than it needed to be.

"Milk, ice cream, cheese, whatever," Josh said, words buzzing against Tito's lips. "Actually that one sounds like maybe you need a doctor, but you know what I mean, I want it. You. Even if your dick has weird problems or whatever." He smirked, and Tito was definitely sunk if the way that made his heart-rate kick up was any indication.

So Tito just grinned right back at him and said, "You already know my dick works just fine," and let his hips push forward against Josh's—where Josh was also very much already into all of this, his dick hard and unmistakably pressing into Tito's hip—and went right back to kissing him some more. 

Josh's mouth was soft and easy against his, and Tito leaned up and into him and just slung his arms around Josh's neck, fingers linking up at his nape, brushing over the short hairs at the back of his neck and making Josh shudder against him.

"I mean I guess we should probably check just to be safe," he said, picking up what Tito was putting down, and then his hands were wandering all over, tugging clothing out of the way.

* * *

They wound up mostly naked on the couch afterward, tangled together, with Josh panting into Tito's neck, a welcome weight pinning him to the couch that felt like an anchor as much as a promise.

"So, uh, before we got distracted," Tito said, rubbing his thumb over the jut of Josh's hip, over and over again like that was the secret to finding the right words for what he wanted to say. "I was asking you out. I wanted to be clear about that."

They sure hadn't done themselves any favors earlier, what with the denial and then the hooking up in public and then continuing to not talk about it the whole way down the aisle. Tito was determined that this time it was going to go better.

Josh shifted his weight around—carefully, given how they were arranged—and sat up, just enough that he could look at Tito without straining his neck. His grin was full wattage, now, and the butterflies in Tito's stomach as he looked back at him had upgraded to giant-sized. Godzilla sized. All the best butterflies. He was almost dizzy with how much he wanted Josh, even with his taste fresh on Tito's tongue and his hands firmly attached to Tito's skin, both of them still touching almost compulsively.

"Well, I hope you know I'm a married man," Josh started to say, enough of an inflection in his tone that Tito could tell he was imitating someone, doing a bit that Tito didn't fully recognize. 

He got enough of it to free up one hand and whack him on the thigh before calling him a dick, though. 

Josh smirked, and then his expression cleared out again, just fondness and affection and a heat that made Tito want to crush him right back down onto the floor for round two, no waiting.

"But yes," Josh said, soft and simple, with a steely determination underneath all of that which Tito didn't think he could've mistaken for anything else. He couldn't believe he hadn't seen this earlier, or at least let himself believe it then, before they'd made everything so complicated. "I mean, it's pretty much always going to be yes, Tito. If you were wondering."

Tito couldn't hide the way that made him feel light all over, almost dizzy and ready to float away on a tide of endorphins and affection.

"So, uh, boyfriends, then?" he said.

Josh nodded, licked his lips and swallowed, and Tito didn't even bother to pretend like he wasn't watching. "Yeah," Josh agreed. "And we can deal with the whole," he waved one hand illustratively, sweeping it away like it was easy, "marriage thing, uh, later?"

Tito had a sneaking suspicion that that meant they were probably going to be filing joint taxes and also lying to people about their actual anniversary whenever they got around to telling them, but it was hard to be too concerned about that. That definitely sounded like a problem that they could leave until the off-season, and in the meantime, Tito was going to just focus on playing good hockey and putting off the off-season as long as they possibly could.

And the longer they could do that, the better their chances of making sure the rest of their friends and families didn't actually find out that they had—

"Oh my god," Tito said, the words spilling out involuntarily. "I just realized the other reason we can't let anyone find out about Vegas."

Josh raised an eyebrow at him.

"We're a _Katy Perry_ song," Tito hissed. "And not even one of the good ones! The boys would never let us live it down if they found out."

Josh blinked at him for a second. "Which ones do you think are the good—not the point, okay, sure, you're probably not wrong."

"I'm not," Tito said, very sure of himself. "So Quiner's wedding present to us can be to literally never tell anyone and preferably forget that he knows it himself."

"You can tell him that," Josh said. "I already told him he was a shitty best man, though, so he might not be feeling very giving."

“I guess he did pay for our hotel room, too,” Tito said. “Maybe I’ll tell him I’m sorry you were a dick about it and then swear him to secrecy?”

“Whatever works, Tito,” Josh said, and slid his own hand back up Tito’s thigh again, offering a very tempting distraction.

Definitely a problem for later, Tito thought, and decided to live in the moment.

* * * 

EPILOGUE

Tito knew the grin taking over his face had to look goofy as hell, but he didn’t care. 

So what if they wound up laughing over the pictures later? He was so happy that he didn’t want to hide that fact in the slightest. Of course, the fact that Josh was wearing an equally broad grin, eyes dancing, hand possessively on the back of Tito’s neck—that just made it all feel even better.

“Speech!” someone yelled, and Tito rolled his eyes in unison with his husband, leaning into him to murmur “you think the open bar was a mistake?”

“Well yes, we knew that since we started planning,” Josh said, “You just said that drunk hockey players were going to be less annoying than sober ones.”

“And I was right,” Tito said, ignoring the table of Isles vets who were definitely forgoing the ‘mix in a water’ advice they’d probably given the rookies. It was still kind of weird to see how _young_ the rookies looked these days; him and Josh had been rookies five or six years ago,sure, but Tito was sure they couldn’t have been that young. That dumb, maybe.

“If you say so,” Josh said indulgently, and he leaned over to kiss Tito again, which just set off a fresh round of catcalling.

It wasn’t like being together for years had ever made kissing Josh any less exciting, especially now they could do it in public, and kissing Josh when they were married, big time, for real, in front of their parents and friends and everyone who mattered?

That was even better.

He grinned against Josh’s mouth, felt the flutter of nerves in his stomach just like it was the first time, and then reminded himself that they couldn’t actually ditch everyone for their hotel room this time. At least, not this early.

“You’d think this was the first wedding you idiots have ever been to,” Tito called over to Ebs and Zeeker and Mat, who were among some of the prime offenders. Mat and Casey both just flipped them off, beaming sunnily, although Zeeker at least had the manners to look mildly ashamed before whipping his head around to check the wedding photographer hadn’t caught that. 

On the other end of the wedding party’s table, Tito’s dad cleared his throat significantly, and Tito remembered the schedule they’d gone over in the rehearsal the other day. Right, they did have a few more things to get through before they were allowed to eat—Tito was _starving_ and Josh couldn’t be much better, they’d both been too nervous to make much of breakfast, which they’d had together anyway in spite of all the traditions people had tried to tell them they should be superstitious about.

“Neither of us is a bride,” Josh had argued, and no one had any comeback for that. 

“Anyway,” Tito said, standing up, and pointedly waiting for everyone to shut up and pay attention. “Thank you all for being here today, we really appreciate it, and since apparently a couple of you wanted to say a few words, I recommend you refill your champagne glasses now and maybe get comfortable.”

“Great intro, Anthony,” his dad said, with a snort, standing up to take over himself, picking up the mic the venue had provided for them. And then with a little more volume, he welcomed all of the guests in English and French, telling Tito and Josh how proud he was of them, and how pleased they were to welcome Josh’s family into their own.

Tito grinned helplessly, his blush half champagne, half from the overwhelming feeling of the moment, and reached over to take Josh’s hand, linking their fingers together, feeling the cool pressure of Josh’s ring against his own fingers. He felt like he could’ve taken on the entire Lightning powerplay by himself and won, then; floating on how good and right everything felt, slotting into place just like they’d planned. And knowing their families and friends were right there with them to celebrate it all made Tito feel almost—invincible. 

He squeezed Josh’s hand and leaned into him, resting his head on Josh’s shoulder and letting it all wash over him: his dad speaking and then Josh’s mother, their groomsmen sharing carefully edited and almost entirely family-friendly anecdotes from over the years, their brothers joining forces to essentially roast the both of them—not that Tito expected anything less—and then the mic got passed to a few of their teammates, working around the table.

Everyone had been on their best behaviour—or close enough for it to count—and Tito had kind of relaxed into just enjoying it all, and only half-heartedly hoping the waiters would come around with the food already, since it seemed like things were winding down.

Which was what made it an unpleasant surprise to hurriedly tune back into the words coming out of Ebs’s mouth just in time to hear, “—and we’re especially glad that you decided to let us all actually be guests for the wedding this time.”

“Uh,” Tito said, not really sure how to retrieve this situation. 

Hopefully no one had realized what Ebs was implying? Everyone had had a lot of wine by that point, it was possible. Not very likely, but not outside the realm of possibilities.

“Anthony Beauvillier—” his mother started to say, just as Josh’s sat bolt upright and began with “Joshua—”, their tones perfect mirrors.

“Oops,” Ebs said, and sat down in a hurry, throwing them an apologetic look.

Josh stood up, and tugged Tito up with him, their hands still clasped, and looked out at all of their friends and family, the teammates who counted almost as both, and shrugged one shoulder ruefully. 

“Thanks a lot, Jordan,” he said, pointedly, and most of the crowd—the parts that weren’t related to them, Tito was fairly sure—laughed. “Anyway, like Anthony said, we’re very glad you could all make it this evening, to celebrate with us. I’ve been in love with him for a long time now, and while we might have, uh, signed some paperwork a while back, it doesn’t mean that we didn’t want to be able to have this ceremony with everyone else we love here, too.”

Both of their mothers looked a little mollified by that, and Tito felt like he could breathe again. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever appreciated Josh’s quick reflexes and quicker wit more than in that moment, and, well. At least now there weren’t any secrets between them and their families. 

However well they’d ended up working out. 

“Good save,” Tito hissed, hoping no one else could hear that, and then cleared his throat. “What he’s trying to say,” Tito said, pitched louder so everyone could hear him. “Is that we won’t hold the lack of wedding presents the first time against you, but most importantly, can everyone please raise their glasses and make a toast—to finding the love of your life, and more importantly, getting to spend the rest of your life with him.”

By the end of his sentence, Tito had stopped looking at the rest of the people in the room and was just watching Josh, his eyes bright and warm. Tito squeezed his hand again and dropped his voice. “Hey, Josh. I love you.”

“We did just get done saying that in front of everyone an hour ago,” Josh said, teasing gently. “But I love you too, babe.”

“I guess I’m just gonna have to keep saying it, then,” Tito said, and leaned in to kiss Josh, again. “Now, just give me five minutes to make sure no one bribes the DJ into playing any Katy Perry for our first dance.”

Josh paused for a moment and then shrugged one shoulder, brushing off the entirely real and alarmingly strong possibility of that happening. “I’ll take our chances there,” he said. “I’m already the luckiest guy here.”

“Wow,” Tito said, touched, and trying to pretend like he wasn’t. “That was so sappy, I can’t believe I married you _twice_.”

“Oh, now we can make jokes about it?” 

“When they’re funny, sure.”

Josh elbowed him in the ribs and rolled his eyes theatrically, the fond grin not leaving his face. “Whatever, you love me. You married _me_ twice, too.”

“And I wouldn’t change it if I could,” Tito said, pitched lower, cheeks hot, letting Josh see and hear everything that Tito felt in those few words, saying what he wasn’t sure he’d ever find all the right words for. 

Maybe they weren’t as traditional as ‘I do’, but he could see the reflection of his emotions in Josh’s eyes too, and for a moment it was like they were the only ones in the room. Just the two of them, together, like they had been before all of this began and like, Tito was fundamentally certain right down to his bones, they would be forever after.

“...okay, fine, that was fucking adorable,” Francis said, breaking into the moment like only a big brother could, waving his hand in front of Tito’s face theatrically. “But maybe you guys could cut the cake and we can all get on with this party.”

“Okay, okay,” Tito said, and he and Josh did just that.

* * *

“You know,” Quiner said, a few hours and a few drinks later, sprawled across two chairs at the table that Tito and Josh had drifted to in their post-dance, pre-honeymoon escape meander. “I think this was, like. The most cursing I’ve ever heard at a wedding?”

Tito snorted, spinning a wine glass—maybe his, maybe someone else’s, who cared at this point—between his fingers idly. “We know how to party?”

“No shit,” Quiner said, glancing back towards the dance floor, where at least half the participants were older than the professional athletes in attendance and somehow also more energetic despite the hour and the amount of dancing that had already gone on. “I’m just saying, I think this wedding video is going to be solidly at least as funny as the first one.”

Tito froze.

Beside him, Josh froze too, his hand tightening convulsively on Tito’s for a second before he made himself let go again.

“Excuse me?” Tito said, right as Josh got out, “What first wedding video?”

“...uh,” Quiner said, slouching even more aggressively away from the collective glare they were pinning him with. He tried a sheepish smile. “Oops?”

—the end—


End file.
